


The Swordmaster's Son

by codenamecynic



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Abuse, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Childhood Friends, Childhood Trauma, D&D Backstory, First Love, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, On-Again/Off-Again Relationship, Open Relationships, Reunion Sex, Threesome - F/M/M, Voyeurism, background M/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-06-27 16:12:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 40
Words: 77,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15688893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codenamecynic/pseuds/codenamecynic
Summary: Born the unnecessary fourth son of a merchant lord, just the spare of the spare of the spare, all Taliesin Ferryman's life was planned for him at birth: serve the kingdom, guard the family legacy, and make his father proud.Unable to meet the cold, ruthless requirements of his father and scapegoated and bullied by his brothers, he finds solace in the one person who has ever made him feel both safe and loved - his best friend, Cort Raghnall, the swordmaster's son.A story about growth, pain, and being in love with your best friend even when life gets in the way.





	1. 12

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bettydice (BettyKnight)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BettyKnight/gifts), [Fionavar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fionavar/gifts), [Dakoyone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dakoyone/gifts), [onemooncircles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onemooncircles/gifts).



> This fic started as a selection of formative scenes from the background of my current character, and sort of grew into... more. If you've been following me for a while (and let's be real, why else are you reading this? lol) you may notice it's a bit different from what I usually write, and in the interests of being completely up front about everything - there's a lot of darkness in this story. It deals with themes of abuse, PTSD, depression, anxiety, early sexualization (briefly) and poor coping mechanisms (in addition to love, it's supposed to be a romance after all... kind of). It also involves a lot of sex (it's me!), all consensual if not always wise.
> 
> Since this is the first time I'm posting a fic without a strong tie to canon characters in an existing franchise, I will post a warning at the head of every chapter, and indicate in the chapter title whether or not it contains explicit sexual material NSFW.
> 
> Whew, okay, I'm not nervous you're nervous.
> 
>  
> 
> **Warnings for this chapter: Violence, abuse**

The wooden pommel of a practice sword slams him dead center in the face, and Taliesin drops like a sack of bricks into the dirt. His vision swims, blood gushing from his nose and a what he can already feel is an impossibly fine cut just below his left eye. It  _ hurts _ . He can’t even spare a moment for his pride and the chagrin of rolling in the dirt like a dog, until he hears his brother laughing.

“Flat on his back like a whore. Get up, rabbit.”

“Fuck off, Gordri!” he snarls.  He’s twelve, not a child, but he hates the way his voice cracks on the words. There is blood in his watering eyes - just as well, it wouldn’t do for the walking cockhead to see him cry, but gods if it doesn’t  _ hurt _ . His going to be green and purple all over, and he’s pretty sure the sick fuck does it on purpose.

“Watch your mouth, baby brother. Mind what you say to your betters.”

His brother is a chortling fool, simple to the extreme, and only a few years older than himself. It’s just Taliesin’s bad luck that he’s so much bigger, growing into height and broad shoulders so early that his personality - or absence of one - was forced to form around it. Gordri is a bully, plain and simple, but all it takes is a nod from their father and all sins are forgiven.

It is, after all, the kind of sin he approves of. His measure of Taliesin has not been quite so kind, and with their mother gone - “ill” he says, which is bullshit,  _ bullshit _ \- it gets worse every day.

Not that he doesn’t make it worse all on his own. He avoids them when he can, ghosting them in the halls and in and out of rooms like a shadow. They call him  _ rabbit _ , but he isn’t afraid - most of the time he just can’t see the point in it. But when he’s cornered -

The rock appears in his hand as though by magic, bloody fingers curling around the shape of it in the dirt. He lets it fly and it hits Gordri in the side of the head, a clump of dirt falling from its surface and scattering wetly over his tunic. It looks like a bird shit on his shoulder.

Taliesin laughs. Predictably, Gordri doesn’t. His nostrils flare like a bull about to charge, and Taliesin is still sitting in the dirt like an idiot. He’s going to get kicked in the face, he can already see it coming, and -

“Gordri. Don’t.”

His brother rounds on the source of the voice. “Are you telling me what to do, Raghnall?”

Cort folds his arms across his chest, calm and unintimidated. “No, but if you kill him what will be the point of all this work you’ve been doing?”

It’s the kind of logic that his brother can’t really argue with (Gordri making a logical argument of any kind - ha!), but Cort’s measured gaze swings his direction as well and Taliesin ducks his head, scrupulously wiping every trace of a gloating smirk from his face.

He’s always looked up to Cort - they all sort of do. He’s a few years older than Taliesin, his brother Jorran’s age, but he carries himself with his father’s quiet dignity. The elder Raghnall has been the swordmaster in Taliesin’s house for decades; even Taliesin’s father will occasionally yield to his expertise, recognizing his family’s lengthy and loyal service.

A strange sort of honor, since it seems to Taliesin that Nial Raghnall doesn’t even particularly like his father at all. 

“He has to learn,” Gordri says, stubborn as a mule, his unfortunate horse face set in grim lines. There is a smudge of dirt on his temple.

“Then let me work with him for now.” Cort’s look is pointed.  “Surely you have better things to do.”

Gordri always thinks he has better things to do, which only ever means eating, drinking, fucking, or hurting something. It’s a very limited range of interest.

Taliesin is never sorry to see him go, and doesn’t even particularly mind when Gordri spits on him in passing, wiping the spittle off his cheek and scraping it and the tacky, drying blood there into the dust.

“He’s such a  _ cunt _ ,” he swears vehemently, mostly just to do it. He’s not impressing anyone at this point, and Cort just rolls his eyes as he takes a knee, reaching out to take Taliesin’s chin, turning it up to look at the damage.

Without warning, he reaches out and pinches the bridge of Taliesin’s nose. White hot agony blossoms through the center of his face, sparks erupting behind his eyes. He roars in pain and flails, yanking his head back. “What the fuck!”

Cort laughs, wipes his fingers on the knee of his dark trousers. “Just seeing if he managed to break your nose. You’ll be fine. Maybe a bit of a scar.”

“That fucking hurt!”

“Well.” Cort shrugs and grins and stands, offering Taliesin a hand up out of the dirt. “If you want to stay pretty, you need to learn to get out of the way. Let me show you what to do when he tries that next time.”


	2. 13 (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Chapter warnings: abuse, drug use, bullying**

Not for the first time, he fantasizes about killing his brother.

It wouldn’t be hard, Taliesin thinks. Just a little something in his ale or food, a knife in the dark, or even just a pillow over Gordri’s stupid face while he’s snoring away in his room, farting and drooling on himself. It would be so  _ easy _ that even a “rabbit” like him could do it, and wouldn’t that be the greatest irony of all, wouldn’t he deserve it, the big fucking-

He coughs and the searing pain that cuts through his left side abbreviates the furious roil of his thoughts, staggering him to the side to catch his balance against the wall. He can taste blood in his mouth and for a moment it scares him, until he remembers that he’s also bleeding from the goddamn nose again, the split on his upper lip a thin compliment.

He feels like he’s been kicked by a mule. Since it’d been his idiot donkey of a brother to kick him through the fence of the practice ring in the courtyard, he figures it’s an apt enough analogy.

Fuck analogies. It was all he could do to just pick himself up and leave. That will get him another beating later he’s sure, but there is no advantage to flinging himself at Gordri with teeth and nails like a feral cat. There is never a point to retaliating in the moment; he isn’t big or strong enough, and with Gordri’s asshole cronies standing around, it’d just be ridicule or he’d get it even worse.

It’s very rarely been worse, but enough to teach him when to keep his mouth shut and when to walk away, even if the indignity of it all brings tears of rage and shame to his eyes. He’s old enough now that he won’t just let himself cry, not even when he’s alone. There is never a point to that either.

There is never a point to  _ anything  _ anymore, and the thought makes him furious enough to snatch a clay pot off the wall of the kitchen gardens and hurl it at the house, shattering it into a hundred pieces. The resulting pain in his chest almost staggers him to the dirt, making him clutch his side as he stumbles onward, no particular destination in mind. Just away and further away.

It’s not lost on him though that the path he’s taking will eventually bring him back around to where he started, just a little fish in a strong current. It is an intensely hopeless feeling.

He’s too busy feeling sorry for himself to notice where he’s going, and he rounds the corner and stumbles into the back of someone both taller and broader than himself. The impact is hard enough to topple him over, shooting angry spears of lightning pain through his ribs. He groans and just lies there for a moment, tempted to curl into a ball but too sore to move, as the man turns to look at him.

Not a man exactly - one of his brother Tamsin’s friends, Lukas he thinks, he can never remember. Tamsin goes through them like wine and money, flitting here and there and everywhere, the dramas of his great social victories constantly overshadowed or underscored by whatever epic falling out he’s currently experiencing.

He’s a pretty fool. Taliesin finds him exhausting.

Lukas picks him up unceremoniously, fisting a hand sloppily into his shirt and pulling him upright by pure force of arm. The world lurches nauseatingly as he gets his feet under him, curling a hand cautiously around his side where his bruises throb. He can feel them burning through his shirt.  _ Fucking Gordri. _

Lukas isn’t alone - Tamsin and two others are with him, looking in turns annoyed, amused and alarmed. He isn’t sure why until the humming in his ears stops and he realizes that they’re crowded around the side of the stables, out of the view of the main house.

There’s another young man there too, crouched against the wall with his head down and shoulders hunched. Taliesin isn’t sure what exactly is going on here, but the boy can only be a few years older than himself, pale in the face and hair mussed and wild. His brother’s eyes are blown wide and dark, pupils enormous.

He’s high again, he realizes. On what he never can tell, but it makes Tamsin… odd. Overly affectionate out of nowhere, or just plain mean. Taliesin is never sure what he’s going to get and so for the most part he just tries to stay out of the way.

Like a rabbit.

He is suddenly so, so tired. “Leave him alone, Tamsin.”

Tamsin laughs. It’s an ugly little sound, all airiness and derision. So,  _ mean _ then. “It’s just a bit of fun.”

He has no idea what he’s interrupted and he doesn’t want to know. “It’s the middle of the day. Why don’t you just take your friends and go find some bottle to crawl into before father sees you.”

Tamsin’s eyes go sharp in an instant, glittering with a malice touched enough with madness that Taliesin feels himself take a step back before he even realizes what danger he’s just put himself in. Why can’t he ever keep his mouth shut? He doesn’t know this boy, why should he even care?

And still, here he is, putting a foot in it. 

“Are you telling me what to do, rabbit?”

“No.” 

It’s not very brave of him, and it’s far too late to backpedal now. Tamsin closes on him, swaying close on a cloud of something that reeks like stickiness and smoke. It’s in his clothes and on his breath; Taliesin can smell it on his hands too when he’s suddenly grabbed by the face, Tamsin’s fingers digging painfully into his jaw and wrenching his head up.

“I think you are.”

“Tam-” a voice from the back; the nervous one, Taliesin thinks.

“Shut up,” Tamsin hisses, and his eyes are dark, cold as a serpent’s. 

Taliesin strains upward with his grip, pulled onto the balls of his feet. It makes his torso stretch, the pain in his ribs spiking as he struggles, his hand around his brother’s wrist. He doesn’t want to hurt him, isn’t sure what will happen if he does. “Let go.”

“I don’t take orders from rodents.”

He can hear his heart pounding in his ears. Once. Twice.

“Go fuck yourself, Tamsin.”

He doesn’t know what possesses him to say it, but things happen very quickly after that. He’s thrown, end over end, rolling across the ground and into the paddock wall. His ribs are screaming, the cut on his lip reopens, and none of that matters because it seems only half a second until he’s snatched up by the collar like a kitten by the scruff of the neck and plunged into the horse trough.

The water is cold, and the side of the trough hits him square in the chest hard enough to drive the air out of his lungs. Instinctively he rears back, trying to get clear, trying to get a breath.

He can’t. The hands holding him in are too strong, pushing him down beneath the water. He panics, flailing and kicking his arms and legs to poor effect, trying to twist out of the hold he’s in. 

He can’t get free. Tamsin is going to kill him in a fit of pique, drowned in a horse trough in the middle of the fucking day. He half gasps a mouthful of water and it  _ burns _ , making him choke and retch beneath the surface. He’s going to die, he’s going to die, he’s going to -

Air comes hard and fast, searing his lungs as he’s thrown unceremoniously backwards, landing on the ground with a crunch that he can feel all the way into his soul. He barely makes it onto his side before he vomits, hacking water out of his lungs, blinded, fingers clawing into the wet earth.

He dashes the hair out of his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt, as drenched as the rest of him, looking up to find the back of a boot in front of his face. There’s someone standing over him, a bulwark between between his prone form and Tamsin’s friends. 

Beyond the figure he can see Tamsin. Jorran is with him, his back to Taliesin, low words exchanged. Jorran is not a fighter, out of place away from his books and scrolls, and for a moment Taliesin is genuinely frightened for him, trying to support himself on arms and legs that don’t seem to want to work to scramble to his feet.

He doesn’t get far, managing little more than to slide himself backwards in the mud forming under his body, but he realizes in a moment of clarity born of that same cold fear that the person in front of him is Cort, tall and broad shouldered and angry in his quiet way, all controlled violence, leashed inside his skin. From this vantage point he can see his profile, the straight nose and square chin, dark brows pulled together. His posture is deceptively relaxed but Taliesin can see his hands, fingers curling into loose fists.

And then suddenly, for no reason he can really put a name to, Taliesin relaxes. If Cort is here, nothing too terribly bad can happen. He won’t let anyone hurt Jorran, and Tamsin, already wont to avoid physical labor of any kind, would surely not risk a thorough trouncing by the swordmaster’s son. 

It’s a fight he won’t win, and with their father, winning is all that ever matters.

Tamsin and his friends slink away like dogs with tails between their legs. The boy cringing against the stable wall is already long gone, and as the tension in the air suddenly abates Taliesin groans and flops back down onto the ground.

Everything hurts,  _ and  _ he’s wet.

Jorran and Cort cross into his vision, coming to stand on either side of him as he stares up at the sky, bloodied and dripping and sore. Jorran has one eyebrow faintly cocked, as though he can’t imagine why Taliesin would just be lying in the dirt like this, as though he’s doing it for fun.

“Don’t be late for your lesson today,” he says, like nothing at all out of the ordinary has happened. “Your verb conjugation is atrocious.”

“Thank you,” Taliesin says in response, his voice croaking around the words but still mostly genuine. 

It’s as though he isn't even there. Jorran nods briefly to Cort and walks away, a book still under one arm. Cort watches him go and then turns his attention to Taliesin. Immediately his brows are drawn back together, an instantaneous frown appearing to cloud his usually measured expression.

Taliesin isn’t sure what to say for himself.

“Hi.”

“I can’t let you out of my sight for even one minute.”

Cort ignores the hand Taliesin extends, going to one knee in the dirt rather than pull Taliesin to his feet. Taliesin starts to say something about how he’ll muddy his pants and then stops, hearing the ridiculousness of the words before they’re even out of his mouth.

Instead he yelps as Cort unceremoniously prods his ribcage, feeling through Taliesin’s sodden shirt to where his side burns and throbs.

“Is that  _ really  _ necessary?”

“You need to see the healer.”

“It’s fine, I’m-” he’s not sure where he’s going with this. It’s embarrassing to be fussed over by Cort, who for being only two years his elder is approximately ten years less messy and convoluted.

Mostly it’s embarrassing because it feels so good, but he’s not about to admit that to anyone. Nobody else gives a shit about what happens to him, but Cort is always there.

“I’m fine,” he says again, and then groans when Cort reaches down and bodily hauls him to his feet, Taliesin’s arm over his shoulders. He’s catching up in height, but Cort is still tall and he’s reminded again between the squish of his boots and the way his breath sounds so loud in his ears that not an hour before he broke a fence railing effectively with his whole self.

“Who are you trying to convince, you or me?”

“Me,” he admits. “You’d never believe me.”

“Because you’re an idiot.”

“I am indeed an idiot,” he agrees, exhausted. Today has not been his finest day and it feels good to let Cort take some of his weight.

“I’ll be okay,” he says, mostly just because he feels he should. 

From the look Cort gives him from the corner of his eye, this is a thing neither of them really believes.


	3. 13 (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Chapter warnings: references to violence, references to death**

He comes here to think, and to be alone. 

No one uses the library anymore, not since Jorran left for Elbulder. The expansive shelves with the books his mother loved sit silent and still except for the spiders and the quiet annoyance of servants who battle the dust.

He can see the water from his perch in the topmost loft, over buildings with less height that scatter Arrabar’s cobbled streets. The sky is as grey as his mood, the kind of color that turns everything else a hue to match.

There’s a storm rolling in. Already some of the captains are taking their ships out to sea, rather than risk their vessels inland; he can see them on the water in the distance, as small as the toy boats he used to play with in the gutters as a child, bobbing as the waves rise, yardarms tilting in the wind.

His mouth has tasted of nothing but ashes for weeks.

A creak on the ladder makes him turn his head sharply, startled by the sound. No one ever comes up here, certainly not his brothers - he isn’t even really sure if Gordri can read, and there is always Tamsin’s “allergy” to consider, as though his brother’s health is delicate enough to be jeopardized by  _ paper _ . 

Ignorant morons, both of them. Still he waits, tense, on the edge of his chair. He’s cornered up here, only one way up and down that isn’t jumping, and - 

A familiar dark head of hair crests over the edge of the loft. Taliesin relaxes. Cort. He’s safe enough.

“What are you doing in the library?”

“I was looking for you.” Cort’s lanky body unfolds in the tight space, ducking his head to avoid ringing his skull against the angled slant of the alcove. “I saw Emril in the hallway. She looked-”

“Angry. I know.” He scrubs his hands through his hair, pulling at the unruly ends. “It’s my fault.”

“What happened?”

“I tried to talk to her again. I know you told me not to.”

Cort is silent, shuffling over after a moment to slide into a chair across from where Taliesin is sitting. He isn’t the type to say  _ I told you so _ ; it’s enough that they both know he’s right. 

“And then what?”

“I asked her to forgive me. She punched me in the stomach.” It didn’t really hurt, but then it didn’t have to. The look on her face had been enough to take the breath straight out of him like all his blood had been replaced with ice water.

“You have to stop. She’s not going to tell you what you want to hear.”

“I  _ know, _ ” the word tears out of him, agonizing. “I just - I want her to know. That I’m sorry, that I didn’t mean-”

“It’s not your fault, Taliesin.”

His head finds his hands, fingers rubbing at his temples. His father does this too; he drops his arms when he realizes. “Isn’t it though.”

“It was an accident.”

“He still fucking died, Cort. And I-”

“Stop. These things happen, it’s the risk we all take. Remember last year, when Mathias-”

“It’s not the same-” his voice is too loud, too high pitched. He cuts himself off, swallows back the sound. “It’s not the same thing.”

“Why not?”

“Because  _ I _ didn’t kill him.”

Cort just looks at him in silence. Eventually Taliesin curses and sits back in his chair, feeling every bit the sulking child that Cort must think he is. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. But you have to put this behind you. People die, Taliesin. You have to accept this if you’re going to survive.”

Taliesin laughs, utterly humorless. “I suppose I don’t have a choice. You know what Father has planned for me.”

Cort’s eyes are clear blue and unwavering. “Then you’d better stop ducking your trainings. You’re just asking for Gordri to make an example of you.”

His lip curls automatically with bravado he doesn’t really feel. “That fat bastard can try.”

The corner of Cort’s mouth lifts, recognizing this as the closest to an acquiescence as he’s going to get. He stands. “Come on then. Go get your gear.”

“What for?”

“If you want to keep him from taking your head off, you need to learn to protect yourself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This bit came about because of dakoyone's character Shay asking one night for the story of the first time Taliesin killed a man. 100% made up on the spot lol.


	4. 14 (NSFW)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Chapter warnings: references to underage sexuality**

There’s a cheer when he opens the door, staggering out into the red tinted hallway with his belt still loose around his waist and a stupid smile on his mouth. Mariah makes a show of kissing him at the door, winking one dark brown eye and patting him on the ass.

He blushes red under the attention, a mixture of embarrassed satisfaction coupled with the knowledge that this is all for his benefit. There’s no way he could have been  _ that _ good, he barely lasted twenty minutes, but it’s the rite of passage part that’s important.

He’s blooded and bedded and now he’s a man. His father would be  _ so _ proud.

That thought takes some of the pleasure out of things. Dorhal’s intrusion anywhere in his life only spells some kind of pain for his son, and he has to be careful lest his quixotic moods take a turn. This is meant to be  _ fun _ .

He stands out of the way as Mathias carries a laughing young woman on his back into a nearby bedroom, smiling bemusedly and shaking his head. His knees still feel weak, he’d like a drink, and as though he’d read his mind, he sees Cort waiting for him in the salon with a glass of wine in his hand.

“I hear congratulations are in order.”

Taliesin flops into a seat, as unruly a mess as Cort is neat and self-assured. Not one single hair on his head is out of place, as though he’s just been sitting here waiting the entire time while the others have their fun.

It seems a very Cort thing to do.

“Not bad for a good day’s work.” He glances at the clock on the mantle. “Hour’s work.” He bursts out laughing, “Maybe ten minutes. I’m an embarrassment.”

Cort smiles at him over the rim of his cup. There’s something cool about the look. Not unkind, just… Cort is judicious about the things he says, what emotion he puts into words. Much more reserved than Taliesin could ever hope to be. Forget bedding women to make a man of himself, he ought to just try to be  _ Cort _ .

There's a thought.

“Did you enjoy it, then?”

Taliesin shrugs. “It was very much like I thought. Only… messier.” He laughs at that, the wine he’s swallowed already taking an effect. Gods, he’s tired.

Cort doesn’t laugh with him, but the smile remains. Maybe a little more genuine now.

“It does get easier.”

“That’s good to know.”

He doesn’t really think about what Cort means until much, much later.


	5. 15 (NSFW)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Chapter warnings: explicit sexual content, underage sexuality (this is the last time this theme appears in this story)**

The stone of the wall is hot against his back. It’s enough to make him sweat, even in the late afternoon shade.

Arissa is on her knees, the satin fabric of her skirts pooled around them like the body of a deep blue sea, lapping at his feet as the undertow of her mouth attempts to suck him down.

He puts a hand out to wrap the back of her head, his shirt held with the other to keep it out of her way, and it takes all of his will not to thrust himself forward. It seems an ungentlemanly thing to do, somehow even less chivalrous than allowing his father’s mistress to blow him in the garden.

He is officially an idiot. Still, somehow,  _ shockingly, _ he can never seem to stop himself.

Her hand slides up his thigh to wrap thumb and forefinger tight around the base of his shaft and despite himself he groans, trying to drown the noise behind the barrier of teeth in his lower lip. The garden is not a popular place this time of day, but it would not do to be discovered.

Counter to his thoughts, he can feel Arissa’s laugh vibrate around him, a cascading shiver that makes his hips jerk and his cock throb. She’s  _ trying  _ to get him to give them away; the thought arouses as much as it rankles. That’s not necessarily the kind of game he wants to play, but Arissa hasn’t shown herself much inclined to listen to him in these matters.

Or ever.

He closes his eyes, rests his head back against the wall as her mouth begins to move again, slightly out of time with her hand. Her fingers are soft, smooth and slick, and he concentrates on pushing himself toward the edge. It’s still a nuance he’s figuring out - to pace himself quickly for her mouth but to last between her thighs, and he finds he has to shape his thoughts in a particular way, to think or not think, to imagine certain -

A twig snaps, quietly but far too close, and his eyes fly open. Cort is propped up against the wall across from them, not even twenty feet away, arms crossed, staring straight at him. 

_ “Shit.” _ He thinks it so loudly the word comes out of his mouth, hand tightening in Arissa’s hair on instinct in an attempt to get her to stop. She laughs again, thinking he’s close and doesn’t, swallowing his cock deep into her throat.

_ Shit. _

He comes, hard, and sees only Cort’s blue eyes watching him through a veil of leaves.

Arissa sits back, dabbing her mouth daintily with a handkerchief lined with lace, and looks up at him, smug as a cat. It’s all he can do to pull up his pants, hands and knees shaking with fatigue, with a sudden frission of fear.

Cort is gone when he looks again, and somehow he manages to convince Arissa to go to dinner without him, needing a moment to himself to dry the sweat on his brow and under his arms and work out this clutch of anxiety in his stomach before he has to interface with  _ people _ . He isn’t even sure why he feels this way; it surely isn’t the first time Cort has caught him doing something terribly ill-advised; it isn’t as though he wasn’t  _ there _ the night that Taliesin lost his virginity to the sweet Amnian girl at Miss Molly’s, throwing coins into the collection plate.

He slips away through the foliage around the wall, headed in the opposite direction of Arissa, and reels to a stop almost immediately. Cort stands with exasperated casualness in front of one of the mosaiced fountains, waiting, the twig he’d snapped spinning in his fingers.

He flicks it at Taliesin and it sticks to his shirt. “You are such a fool.”

“I… know.” He picks the twig up, holds it awkwardly in his fingers. It’s warm to the touch and for a moment all he can think about is the heat of the wall at his back and a mouth around his cock and ocean eyes boring into him and -

He takes a breath, shudders. Cort frowns at him, dark brows pulled in until a familiar crease appears between them. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Of course I do.”

He doesn’t. He really, really doesn’t.


	6. 16

A single word from his father, and his entire life is upside down.

Again.

It takes forever to get to his rooms; the corridor seems to run on endlessly, alternating dark and bright as sunlight spills through the crested windows and onto the thick red carpet. It’s his own fault for intentionally moving himself somewhere so far out of the way; he wanted to be able to come and go as he pleased without running afoul of his brothers, but at midday there are a half dozen other people he has to dodge instead. He grinds his teeth and forces himself not to run, putting one foot in front of the other, head held high.

There isn’t even a point in running, anyway. He has absolutely nowhere to go.

Taliesin pulls the door shut behind him and for a moment all he can do is stand in the middle of his room, clench his fists, and try not to scream.

He needs to pack his things. What things does he need to pack? He doesn’t know.  _ Shit. _

He’s not even sure how he’s supposed to feel, but nonsensical tears burn at the back of his throat, making it impossible to swallow. He’s not going to cry, that would be ridiculous and childish and he strives to be neither of those things. He’s a man of sixteen, he’s gone without proper responsibilities long enough.

This was always going to happen anyway. It’d been decided for him the day he was born.

He has himself mostly under control by the time he hears a knock, three heavy raps to announce himself before Cort just opens the door and lets himself in. His presence is unsurprising, anticipated, and still somehow Taliesin can’t turn around as the door closes again, boot heels on the empty flagstones of his floor.

“I heard.” And that, he thinks, is all that really need be said. He doesn’t stop what he’s doing, folding one of his shirts with crisp precision, laying it on the bed with a stack of others. Cort comes around next to him, shoulder to shoulder. “Which vessel?”

“The  _ Star Shark _ .”

“With Captain Veda?”

“That’s the one.”

Cort is silent for a moment, and then folds his arms across his chest. It’s a tell, one of his very few; he isn’t happy, but it’s beneath him to say it out loud. “I’ll ask my father what he knows.”

“No need.” Taliesin grins, finally turning his gaze on his frowning friend. Cort may have all the skill in managing emotions, but Taliesin can always fake a smile. “My father wants to punish me, not put me in a position to humiliate the family. It will be a fair enough posting, I’m sure.”

“With such short notice.”

“The captain owes him a favor, it would seem.” Enough of a favor to make room for a little extra baggage. Taliesin shrugs. “This was always going to happen.”

Cort, wisely, says nothing. But then, what would he say? Taliesin is always the one talking, talking, talking, anyway. It’s exhausting.

“So this is because of  _ her _ , then.”

Taliesin snorts. It’s not even a question,  _ of course _ it’s because of Arissa. He’d just as soon give her back to his father - not that Dorhal would have her now. If Tamsin hadn’t attracted her attention he would be glad to get away, as stifled by her presence as he had once been gratified and flattered by the obsessive bent of her attention. But now, in leaving home -

He’s never been further away from Arrabar than his father’s hunting cabin, and that’s only a two day’s ride. What will he do when he’s out to sea? The idea of all that ocean, stretched out for miles and miles, just him and the sky and the waves and -

It feels very empty. It might be terrible and lonely here too, sometimes, but at least he has friends.

“You never should have taken his girl.”

“Gods,  _ I know _ .” Like a fool, he’s laughing, and he isn’t even quite sure why. It’s a ridiculous situation all around and he can’t absolve himself of any of it. This is absolutely a thing he has done to himself, as much of an idiot as ever. “I didn’t even really want her, I just-”

“Wanted him to respect you.”

Unexpectedly the lump in his throat is back. He smiles around it, eyes trained on his hands rather than force himself to look at Cort’s face. Cort has this way of cutting straight to the quick, down through the heart of him. He knows him too well, he supposes; there’s never anywhere for him to hide. 

Not that he needs to. Cort is his best friend, which is probably less flattering for Cort than it is for himself. He has silently watched Taliesin do half a dozen poorly advised things and never wavered, and most of those probably just in the last week.

He hears Cort sigh when he doesn’t answer, and feels suddenly one strong arm wrap around his shoulders. Immediately he wants to go to pieces, never good at being comforted in the moment, and instead stands rigid and foolish and unresponsive as Cort pulls him into an embrace.

Cort isn’t much of one for casual displays of physical affection; such instances are rare enough to be cherished. By degrees he softens until he manages somehow to relax, his head bowed on Cort’s shoulder. He smells like cedar dust from the chips they use to line the weapons salle floor, like leather, oil and horses. It’s a scent he associates with  _ home, _ and he fills his lungs with it until they ache.

“You’re going to be alright.”

“I know.” And then, because it feels too real and too close to his heart, and because there’s nothing either of them can do about it anyway, he smiles and peels himself away, enough at least to meet Cort’s eyes. “I’ll try not to embarrass you.”

Cort quirks half his mouth up into something like a smile, and lightly slaps Taliesin’s cheek. “You’d better not.”


	7. 18

The  _ Star Shark _ makes port in Mussum, and he realizes it's the closest he’s been to Arrabar since he left it. The smell of the sea is what does it; it has the same sort of brine in the air, the wind coming from the same direction.

It makes him… nostalgic. Or at least that’s the word he thinks is appropriate.

He’s grown sea legs, about six inches in height, and a beard. He isn’t sure yet about the facial hair, but the men say it makes him look older, rugged,  _ manly. _ It makes him laugh, but he tries it out.

He tries out other things too; strange liquor, the pipe, and a dozen pretty faces every time they come to port. Pretty, of course, is relative. The halfling barmaid who gives him the unexpected night of his short life isn’t his usual fare, but it's a story, an experience.

This is expected. There is no one watching him to tell him no, no weight of extemporal duty hovering over his head like a scimitar on a string.

And if on occasion he ends up drawn to someone with dark hair and blue eyes, well. That’s just coincidence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So fun story, this game is set in Faerun but conceptualized before/without overly zealous reference to the redrawing of maps and such in 5th edition, so please don't ever try to coordinate these locations on a map, you'll just cry. Just close your eyes and trust that it makes sense somewhere, to someone.


	8. 20 (Part 1)

The sweet smell of cedar, the tang of sweat, and the distant metallic smell of old blood washes over him as Taliesin rounds the corner into the indoor weapons salle, spiced with the sound of clashing swords, barking voices and the occasional curse and laughter. Arrabar has much changed in his four year hiatus out to sea, but this - this is exactly the same. He’s smelled this scent in his dreams.

“Well holy shit.”

“Look at that ugly mug!”

“Son of a bitch - I knew you’d be back!”

He interrupts the afternoon training with arms spread as wide as his smile, the recipient of cat calls, sweaty hugs and a good natured punch in the arm. He hasn’t seen these men in ages.

“You grew up fucking _ tall _ ,” Aric says, squinting at him. He’s about half a head shorter than Taliesin but built like a wall, wielding a heavy wooden shield on one arm as though it weighs no more than a tankard of ale.

“Ha!” Stefan tags him in the ribs with an elbow, making him wince and laugh. “He’ll give Raghnall a run for his money.”

“Where is-”

Cort.

He’s standing just beyond the throng of sweaty, jostling bodies like a wolf watching his foolish pups, a faint smile on his handsome face. Patient and quiet, relaxed with his arms crossed over his chest as though he knows that all he has to do is wait and Taliesin will come to him.

He’s right, of course, like usual. Taliesin meets his eyes, those blue, blue eyes, and is suddenly breathless.

*

The sun is high in the sky before they get a moment alone, coming back from a luncheon that included far too much ale. Taliesin’s father is still away on business, some kind of emergency that called Gordri  _ and _ Nial away with him. With Tamsin gone, summering with another friend in the countryside, the household staff treats the homecoming of their young lordling with festival cheer. 

They’ll get used to him eventually, of course, but in the meantime the welcome is… welcome.

And Cort is the same as ever, steady and unwavering. He’s still tall - taller than Taliesin, but just barely - and thick in the chest, all broad shoulders and strong arms. Frankly it’s a bit ridiculous; he’s built like he spends all day pushing boulders back and forth across the courtyard, but he only rolls his eyes when Taliesin says so, a tolerant smile curved across his lips.

He walks Cort back to the swordmaster’s quarters, laughing, talking about nothing, and because they are who they are he ends up with weapons in hand; two weighted practice swords like he hasn’t held in years.

“Let’s see if you remember anything at all of what I taught you.”

Fighting Cort has always been a matter of evasion and maneuver. He has a mighty swing, and the shield he prefers to use is hard to get around. One wrong step and Taliesin’s going to get flattened, sprawled out on his ass in the wood chips like when he was thirteen. He’s been home five minutes, he wants to keep his dignity at least until tomorrow.

He keeps himself in motion, circling, making Cort chase him, testing the waters, diving in at openings and opportunities when he sees them. His blade rings off Cort’s shield hard enough to push him a step back, rocking on his heel as his arm and shoulder absorb the force of the blow. 

A single dark brow lifts behind its rim. “You’re actually not terrible at this.”

Taliesin laughs, slipping back out of range as Cort feints forward. “Damning with faint praise, Raghnall? What do you think I’ve been doing for four years - rowing?”

Cort pauses and looks him up and down, pretending to consider, using the distraction to lunge in with his sword when Taliesin laughs again. “I thought you’d be fat as a walrus, drinking and whoring from port to port.”

“There was also all that about fighting pirates, but why not focus on the exciting parts. Deck swabbing for instance.”

“Scandalous.”

“You have no idea,” he jests, dancing back in, trying to get around Cort’s shield. Cort traps Taliesin’s rapier between its edge and the larger blade of his mock-longsword, managing to duck just in time to avoid the overhand swing from the other side that cracks again into reinforced wood, blunted metal edge ringing hard enough to send shivers up his arm.

“You’re getting slow.”

“And you still drag your left foot when you come in from above.”

“How dare you,” Taliesin gasps, pretending offense, and Cort laughs, shrugs.

“You were always weak on the left.”

“Slander and lies.”

“Try it again and see what happens.”

Well he’s clearly too smart for that. Cort has unfair advantage, knows all of his moves. They’ve been around and around this practice yard a thousand times, the steps as familiar as the angle of the afternoon sun through the high windows, and the lock of hair that sweeps forward across Cort’s forehead.

He’s missed this more than he realized. The smell of horses and damp earth sweeping in from the courtyard, the rustle of the white pear tree his mother planted beyond the salle gate, the familiar halls of his childhood home. His rooms, his friends. Cort.

He’s missed Cort most of all he thinks.

That’s not going to stop him from thrashing him once and for all, of course. Gods knew he’d eaten enough dust in his early days, he’s got years worth of pride to win back.

Twisting to put Cort to his right side, he raises his sword and -

*

“Taliesin.  _ Taliesin.” _

_ Fuck, _ is all he can think. Fucking  _ ow. _

He doesn’t even try to sit up, one eye blinking blearily open. It’s extremely bright, sunlight right in his face until a shadow falls over him, relieving the sting. Slowly Cort comes into focus, silhouette first and then details filling in: the hard line of his jaw, the straight nose, dark brows pulled together over eyes the color of a storm on the sea.

He looks -

Taliesin’s not really sure how he looks, but he doesn’t try to move, lying still on what he gathers is the floor as Cort hunches over him. There’s a hand twisted up in his shirt, another on his throat near his pulse. The moment feels fraught, and not only because of the blood he can feel trickling through his hair.

“I guess I  _ do  _ drag my left foot.”

He smiles to try and break the tension he can feel pressing him into the ground, heavy as the hand against his chest, but Cort doesn’t smile back. He wears an expression Taliesin has never seen before, somewhere between cold anger and hot-eyed relief and he isn’t - he isn’t sure.

“Cort?”

He swears, lets go of Taliesin’s shirt. “I thought I fucking killed you.”

“...sorry?”

Cort just stares at him, the crease between his brows the deepest he’s ever seen it. He rocks back on his heel, hand rubbing at his jaw, a streak of red left behind on his clean-shaven skin. 

Blood - he’s got Taliesin’s blood on his hands.

Cautiously he props himself up on his elbows. Cort reaches to help him, strong hands clasping his shoulders, pulling him into a sitting position and nearly into Cort’s arms. His head swims at the change in elevation and is steadied by Cort’s fingers wrapped about the back of his neck, thumb pressed to the corner of his jaw.

There’s a long moment where neither of them speak, Cort’s mouth set in an unyielding line. He starts to say something, to deflect, make a joke, and suddenly Cort is  _ gone, _ bounding to his feet and stalking away, leaving Taliesin to stare after him.


	9. 20 (Part 2) NSFW

He takes his dinner in his room, begging off the invitations for carousings and catch-me-ups with protests of exhaustion.

It’s a total fabrication; he isn’t tired at all. What he is, however, is afraid that he’ll run into Cort. Or rather, that Cort will run  _ away  _ from  _ him _ . Whatever happened in the courtyard that afternoon hasn’t left him alone, and not because of the pain at his temple where a bruise has slowly begun to blossom. Cort isn’t the type to flee, and watching him walk away felt like witnessing a full-scale retreat. Disconcerting to say the least.

He isn’t sure how he’s going to approach this. It’s been  _ years _ since he’s been back here, and so much has changed. It’s not that they haven’t spoken - they exchange the odd letter, maybe once or twice a year, but had it not been for Dorhal ordering him back to Arrabar with all the imperius  _ gives-no-shits _ that his father could muster, he might have stayed away forever. Naval life suits him. For the first time he feels like he has a place where he belongs, and that place is not this room, nor this mansion, nor anything to do with the name he’s carried since birth.

He’s fulfilling his purpose, the duty of his birthright. If his father could have been satisfied with that - no. There’s no point in thinking that way. Not when his father is satisfied by so very little.

This still doesn’t answer his dilemma about Cort, and he eats in silence, staring moodily out the window into the garden until a knock at his door interrupts. Three hard raps, evenly timed. He knows  _ exactly  _ who it is.

Why, then, does his stomach suddenly twist? He feels jittery, a tremble in his knees as he wipes his hands, straightens his shirt, and runs his fingers through his hair. The aftereffects of a concussion, perhaps. Nothing to concern himself with, surely.

Surely.

He goes to open the door, bare feet padding over the naked stone.

Cort stands on the other side, still and calm as always. He has his hands folded behind his back as though at parade rest, as though Taliesin is his commanding officer and he’s come to make a report. Cort has never had to answer to him for anything; he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do.

They stare at each other for a long moment. When he doesn’t move out of the way or let go of the door, Cort shifts uncomfortably and drops his arms to his sides. “May I come in?”

_ Shit. _ “Of course,” he stutters, stumbling hastily out of the way. What is wrong with him? It’s like his legs don’t even work. He’s nervous, which is utterly ridiculous. It’s just Cort. 

Cort, his oldest friend, whom he’s basically worshiped since they were boys.

_ Oh is  _ that  _ all? Fuck you, Taliesin. _

“So…” he starts, but never gets the chance to finish.

“I need to apologize to you.”

“Ah. No, you really don’t.”

Cort shakes his head. “How I behaved this afternoon - I shouldn’t have.”

“It was an accident.”

“That isn’t what I mean.”

“Oh.”

Again, all he can do is stare. Cort isn’t given to pacing, and all of the pent up motion in his body rises, welling behind his eyes. They’re shadow dark, deep as midnight, and Taliesin is caught up in their current. There is a wild energy in their depths, flashing like lightning beneath the waves.

“Damn it, Taliesin. Do you really not  _ know?” _

The space between wanting and wishing is fine, thin as a razor’s edge. One he is familiar with, the other he has never dared to allow. Not about this. He doesn’t have so many good things in his life that he’d casually risk their ruin.

If there was a choice for him to make it would have frozen him in indecision, but this time there isn’t. Cort sighs roughly, crosses the space between them in three long strides, curls his hand around the back of Taliesin’s neck and kisses him.

It’s raw, rough with unsaid words and quiet emotion making its presence known with something like a shout. One kiss and he’s gasping for air, for words, for a lifeline, all wide eyes and trembling lips like the ingenue he isn’t. It’s not right that he’s this flustered, he should be- should be-

They break apart and Cort looks at him, really looks. 

“Tell me no.”

The way he says it, so serious, his expression so grim, Taliesin wonders if that is truly what he wants to hear. There’s a part of him that would say the word simply because Cort told him to, following something like an order because it’s easy to do and he trusts Cort not to steer him wrong.

He doesn’t really  _ want  _ to, though. That’s the thing. Now he’s drunk from the cup and he wants so much more than just a sip, doesn’t want this to be all there is, just one frantic kiss behind a closed door in a home he thought he left behind.

“Taliesin.” His name is almost a plea, but Cort’s fingers are on his face, cupping his jaw, the pad of his thumb resting just beneath his mouth as though longing to touch his lips.

He never has been good at stopping himself.

It’s clumsier than it should be; he’s no green youth to stumble through the motions, but gods help him, he’s nervous. It’s  _ Cort _ . He’s not entirely certain it isn’t all just a dream, but if it is - it’s the best dream he’s ever had.

Taliesin leans in and kisses him again, and all it takes is a single match struck to make everything go up in flames. They kiss and they kiss and they don’t stop until he’s breathless, his hands tangled up in Cort’s shirt and his bare feet scuffing against the bare floor as they fight to make it to the bed before tipping over, an ungainly pile of long limbs.

There’s a mad laugh bubbling in his lungs. Cort is heavy, crushing him into the mattress, pinning him to the sheets. He props himself up as if he knows, balancing on elbows set to either side of Taliesin’s shoulders. 

This is not a first for him; Taliesin can tell that right away. It isn’t  _ his  _ first time with a man either, but he can’t help but wonder when this happened, why he’s never noticed a preference in Cort that now, in retrospect, seems so obvious.

They lock eyes, just for a moment, before Cort dips his head again and takes his mouth.

The message is clear. No speaking. It’s too soon, too fragile, and if they talk they’ll have to  _ talk _ , and there might be twenty years of things unsaid to address before they can stop.

Fine. He has questions - so many questions - but they’ll keep. 

His hands travel Cort’s spine from narrow waist to broad shoulder, kneading his fingers into the fabric of his shirt, feeling muscle ripple as Cort arches into him. He’s strong; he’s always been strong where Taliesin is quick, and he can feel that strength through every inch of his body, from the plane of his chest to the thickness of his thighs.

Cort is, without a doubt, beautiful. Taliesin is  _ certain _ he does not deserve this.

The mouth on his pulse makes a very compelling argument though, or at least a welcome distraction. Cort’s kisses are unhurried and meticulous, just like the man himself, and when his hands move they move with surety and purpose, exploring ground both familiar and new. Taliesin is certain they’ll take him to pieces, and his breath catches in his throat when it starts with his shirt, coming undone under patient fingers. Everything is methodical, deliberate, each new inch of flesh exposed cataloged with a kiss until his body is laid bare. 

His heart hammers, lust and fear and something else entirely as Cort gazes down at him with eyes like rough water at sunset, all grays and deep blues.

Strong fingers with their callused tips trace the contour of his chest, sliding downward through the trail of hair that disappears beneath the waistband of his pants, and he is already so perilously hard his cock tents the fabric of his trousers. He shifts awkwardly, embarrassed to be so eager, only to give a stuttering cry when Cort cups him with his hand, outlining the thickness of his swollen shaft between thumb and forefinger.

He wants to feel that caress on his skin so badly it makes it hard to breathe, his hands fisted in the pillow beneath his head and his heart up in his throat. It’s everything he can do not to thrust his hips upward as the pad of a calloused thumb rasps over the material separating cock from fingers, sensing instinctively that his constant headlong rushing, while possibly welcome, won’t grant the satisfaction needed.

He’ll wait. He will. He can survive this.

His reward is a scattering of kisses across his side, the hot wet trail of a tongue over his hip. It feels more like punishment; he’s swollen to bursting, and it takes everything he has to keep his hands where they are, clutched into the sheets when Cort seizes the laces of his breeches in his teeth. He groans out loud, his cock aching for release, granted a heady freedom when the material of his trousers is tugged aside, peeling him out of the last of his clothing.

Somehow Cort is still fully dressed, still has his boots on. That hardly seems fair, the ground terribly uneven, and rules or no he opens his mouth to protest.

The only sound that emerges is a low hiss between teeth as Cort takes him in hand, a slow, languid stroke from base to tip that makes his hips buck upward off the bed of their own accord. He barely manages to settle himself before Cort does it again. And again. And again. Measured and sure and leisurely until Taliesin is all but writhing for want of something more, too much and not enough all at once. He’s never belonged to anyone in his whole life, but in this moment Cort owns him, body and soul.

When he takes him into his mouth, he thinks he’ll die.

It’s all he can do to keep from coming apart instantly. His mouth is so hot it nearly burns and dimly he hears himself whimper, eyes squeezing shut, trying to drag this out as long as he can. Cort pays him no mind, cruelly, generously, cheeks hollowing, creating suction around him until he forgets to breathe and his vision starts to go dark in spots around the edges.

He loses himself with a cry that he can’t stifle, ringing off the empty walls and echoing back to him as a thin wail when Cort doesn’t stop, swallowing around him and patiently working his softening cock back to hardness.

It feels so good it hurts, sensitive nearly to the point of pain; it’s almost a relief when Cort lets him free. His breath is ragged in his throat and he’s still fucking  _ hard _ , cock throbbing where it rests against his stomach.

Cort kisses his hips, his chest, and rises up over him, straddling his waist and sweeping his shirt off and over his head in an impossibly surreal movement of flexing arms and rippling abdominals that just sort of makes Taliesin want to cry, ridiculous and emotional and filled with an overwhelming gratitude that imposes itself without warning. He’s never done  _ anything  _ good enough to deserve this, not one thing in his whole worthless life.

He dares to reach out, shaping the smooth contours of muscle and sinew with his hands. Cort’s chest swells beneath his touch and he lifts Taliesin’s hands to his mouth, kissing fingertips, knuckles, wrists, passionate and delicate like what he touches is precious.

Unexpected tears spring unbidden to his eyes and he blinks them away, swallowing around the lump in his throat. Cort dips his head, mouth following the trail of tattoos on the inside of his right forearm toward the crook of his elbow as Taliesin threads his hands through his hair. The neat ponytail at the nape of his neck is still intact and he reaches out to loosen it, tangling the leather thong in his fingers.

Cort kisses his way back up again and takes it from him, ties it in a loop around his wrist.

_ Mine _ . He doesn’t have to say it out loud, and Taliesin doesn’t argue.

Cort manages to shed the rest of his clothing, struggling through the awkward process of removing his boots and pants somehow without looking overly undignified. Taliesin enjoys watching him move, the way the waning light plays over his body. The sun is going down and the shadows are warm and red, casting his form in bronze and gold like an artful statue of some blessed creature.

Taliesin doesn’t pray, but maybe he should. He’d go to his knees at an altar like this.

As though he can hear the blasphemies repeating in his head, Cort looks almost amused, bending forward to move his mouth over the top of Taliesin’s thigh. His long hair brushes against his hip, cool and shivery.

Without even having to ask he sees where this is going, what will happen next, and it excites and terrifies in equal measure. He’s been with men before, but never this way. If he raises no objection, Cort is going to fuck him. The thought is almost enough to make him come undone.

“Do you want to stop?”

That’s just  _ tell me no _ again in different words, and Taliesin won’t. Can’t.

Mute, he shakes his head. Cort nods, kisses his cheek, and reaches for the drawer in Taliesin’s bedside table. It’s almost embarrassing, the assumption that he’ll have something for this just lying around - but of course he  _ does  _ and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Not that it matters; his face goes flame red regardless, until Cort takes him into his mouth again without preamble and all the blood in his body travels elsewhere.

It doesn’t hurt, not exactly. Cort just has big hands, long fingers. They make him squirm, working his hips until he’s comfortable with the intrusion. This isn’t new, but he’s never had anyone prepare him with the expectation of something more and Cort - 

Well, Cort isn’t exactly  _ small. _

Gods help him, it’s almost - well it’s almost funny. He just doesn’t think he can laugh, his stomach too tight, body tipping again into the ascent, dragged up the precipice again between hand and mouth and the slippery chaos of it all.

He could come again, Cort hasn’t told him not to, but he wants to wait. Wants to feel what it’d be like with Cort inside him.

He expects to be turned to face away and is glad when it doesn’t happen, his hands toying with the long ends of Cort’s hair as he stretches out over him, propped up on one arm set next to Taliesin’s head, caging his body beneath him against the bed, legs splayed about his hips. It’s a position that leaves him feeling vulnerable and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, dropping them to his sides when it feels like they’re only in the way.

“Touch yourself,” Cort instructs, leaning in to steal a kiss from bitten lips and soften the command. “I want to see you.”

He obeys. It solves one problem and presents him with another, struggling to focus on what he’s doing as he feels Cort slide against him, hot and slick and hard.

This is happening, this is happening, this is-

It doesn’t hurt, not exactly. He can feel himself give, hears Cort groan, and has to hold on to something other than himself, reaching to dig his fingers into the muscle of Cort’s shoulder. Cort touches his face, curving a hand around his jaw and leaning down to kiss him hard as he slides home.

He doesn’t die but it feels like he might, spread across the bed and at Cort’s mercy. His entire lower body throbs and he can feel  _ everything _ , strung tight and taut and trembling. He shivers despite himself, and again when Cort moves just the slightest fraction, arcing over him to press lips to brow. He stays as motionless as he can as Taliesin shudders beneath him, stroking his face, his neck, his chest, as he struggles to adjust.

It’s not so bad and then it’s  _ good  _ in an instant. He works his hips, moves just right, finds a place all wet heat and friction for his mind to crawl inside. He closes his eyes, tests the limits of his motion, rides the sensation. Above him Cort’s jaw clenches, the muscles in his shoulders quivering with the effort of stillness, letting Taliesin do what he needs to do, letting him regain a modicum of control.

Their eyes meet, blue to gray. Cort smiles, slow and wide without a hint of teeth, just like he has since they were boys.

They find a rhythm. Slow at first, and more tender than Taliesin believes is really possible, just a gentle rolling of Cort’s hips until he’s used to the sensation of movement, until he can handle more. Until he’s almost begging for it, trying to arc his body up off the bed to meet his shallow thrusts, cock in his fist. Cort watches, matching tempo for a time until Taliesin’s toes curl, close to another release. Only then does he shift onto his knees, pulling himself up and over, hands on Taliesin’s hips to hold him still and ready.

He isn’t rough, just incredibly thorough. He finds an angle that makes stars explode behind Taliesin’s eyelids, making use of size and strength to trap his hips in position. In to the hilt and then back out again, over and over and over until they’re both covered in sweat. Cort’s breath comes in low rasps of effort, restrained and contained as always, but it’s all Taliesin can do not to break the silence and beg, fingers tight enough around Cort’s wrist that he can feel the bones move.

He’s trapped, caught in the current of those blue, blue eyes; he couldn’t escape if he wanted to.

And why would he want to?

“Please,” he hears himself say, eventually, voice as hoarse as if he’d been screaming with the effort it takes to be quiet, throat closing around the word.

Cort’s eyes shutter, a quake in his hips that puts him slightly off-cadence. He  _ likes _ that.

“Please,” Taliesin says again, and bites down on a groan as Cort’s hand comes off his hip and curls around his where it strokes his leaking cock, sticky and slick with precum. They move together - once, again - and every muscle in his body winds excruciatingly tight in an instant. 

He comes. Again.  _ Hard.  _ It seems to last forever, mindlessly rutting himself into Cort’s hand as his hips pick up speed and force. Cort curls in on himself, something like a growl deep in his throat as he pushes deep, hips bucking out of time with his release.

Exhausted, spent, they stop, panting, and look at each other.

Taliesin grins.


	10. 20 (Part 3)

Taliesin’s father does not return. They wait for weeks with no word, only to receive a message from Nial that negotiations have been delayed. Dorhal never bothers to address his errant son and, more inured than he realized to his father’s seemingly pointless slights, Taliesin can’t seem to bring himself to care.

The  _ Star Shark _ will make port in Arrabar in two month’s time. He could contrive a way to meet it if he wanted, but he has a compelling reason not to.

A reason with blue eyes and dark hair, and a smile that can bring him to his knees.

And does. Frequently.

They spend the entire summer together, nearly inseparable, picking up where they left off in some ways and starting over brand new in others. It’s a careful dance though, a subtle back and forth between what they do when they’re alone and how they are when they’re not. It’s a thing that Taliesin is better at navigating than Cort is, because Cort is always Cort and Taliesin, on his best day, can be anything.

He flirts with everyone - men, women, commoners and nobility alike. It’s easy to be  _ easy _ , sliding into the persona of Taliesin-at-sea, cut loose from the moorings of his family responsibilities, wild and carefree. He drinks in taverns, lets himself be dragged to whorehouses, indulges when he feels like it’s appropriate or expected.

He isn’t unhappy; in fact, this is the happiest he thinks he’s ever been. It’s just also sometimes more complicated than they pretend.

It’s a beautiful day, balmy and warm with just enough of a breeze to keep the humidity from being stifling. They’re companionless save their horses on a little stretch of beach they discovered as children, a swath of white sand hidden between outcroppings of dark rock where brave fishermen cast their nets over the reef. The peace makes him languorous, limbs heavy and eyes half-lidded, wanting little more than to curl himself into Cort’s lap like a cat and be petted.

He won’t, though. It’s too exposed; even here they can’t be certain they won’t be seen.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks, on his back in the sand. Cort sits next to him, chest bare and shirt draped over one shoulder, arms loosely about his bent knees. It makes his body look like sculpted metal, crystals of salt shimmering where the sea has dried on his skin. He glances down as Taliesin continues. “About what happened last night at Miss Molly’s. I know you didn’t like it.”

Cort meets his eyes for a brief moment and then looks away, casting his gaze far out into the waves. Not avoiding, just thoughtful. Cort can’t be rushed into these things, and so Taliesin waits, combing his fingers through the sand between them.

“I suppose I was jealous,” he says eventually, a half-smile to gentle the words though they’re spoken softly enough. It’s as though he knows what Taliesin’s stomach does when he says things like that, the little clutch confused between lust and fear. “I don’t like seeing you with other men.”

“Then I won’t be.” That’s easy enough to agree to, but it makes Cort frown.

“I’m not asking you not to.”

Taliesin shrugs, fiddles with the knotted leather cord around his wrist. “I know, but you don’t have to. It’s not a big deal.”  _ It’s all for you, anyway.  _

He doesn’t say the last part out loud, but he doesn’t need to. He can tell from the way Cort’s face darkens that he knows exactly what Taliesin means. They’ve never discussed this in so many words, but he’s learned to take his cues, and to be with Cort at all is so much more than he deserves that he won’t risk unwanted questions. It’s harmless enough, he thinks; they’re both just doing things men do.

Cort’s gaze drifts away again, leaving Taliesin alone in the sand. Eventually he speaks, quiet, matter of fact, but something in the words is almost sad.

“You know my father has certain expectations of me.”

“What father doesn’t.”

Cort’s mouth curves at the immediate sarcasm of his response. “He wants me to take his place as your father’s swordmaster.”

That’s expected. Nial has been grooming his son for the position for as long as he’s been alive. “He’s stepping down then?”

“Not immediately, but soon. Soon enough, at any rate.”

“You have the respect of the men, anyone can see that.  _ And  _ you’re a passable enough fighter.”

A small jest, too small to grant him a proper smile. “He’ll want me to settle. Do the family honor.”

And there, the crux of it. It’s an old, omnipresent thing, this yoke of nobility. He’ll need to take a wife, produce a son - or at least enough well-mannered daughters to equal an adequate substitution of collected sons-in-law that the Raghnall position is secure. 

No one has spoken to  _ him  _ of such things in a while, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t understand that the same burden rests upon his shoulders. But he’s just the lowly fourth son, the spare of the spare of the spare. It isn’t something that weighs heavily on his mind. Cort, though, is Nial’s eldest, the only surviving child of a late wife whose ring he still wears.

It just makes Taliesin sad.

Cort notices, because Cort can read him like a map. “Please don’t.”

Cry, he means. Taliesin frowns at him, uncertain enough in the rest of his feelings that the only safe emotion to cling to is annoyance. “I’m not. And anyway, what does this have to do with me?”

“It doesn’t seem very fair to you. To force you to abstain while I…”

_ Pretend to a life not my own. _ His voice is genuine but resigned, and he says these things so calmly that Taliesin  _ does _ want to cry. He stares hard at the sky instead, watching gulls wheel in circles overhead.

“Taliesin-”

“You could go to sea.”

Cort looks startled, and then bemused. “What?”

Taliesin smiles, pivots in the tide of conversation. “You could come with me. Or we could just go. Buy a ship - or steal one, if you’re feeling racy.”

Cort just shakes his head, that wry half-smile on his mouth again. He knows perfectly well what Taliesin is doing, he’s just not going to stop him. It’s too nice a day, and this isn’t a conversation he wants to have either.

“I’m not sure I’d suit.”

“Perish the thought. We could be  _ pirates _ . ‘Dread Captain Raghnall’ has a ring to it.” He lifts his head lazily, tilts it to look at Cort. “I could be your first mate.”

“What, you don’t want to be captain?”

Taliesin grins. “Maybe I just like serving under you.”

Cort blinks and stares at him for a long moment and then -  _ shockingly - _ throws back his head and laughs. “Well, you do hoist my mainsail.”

Taliesin nearly chokes on the unexpected innuendo, and blushes a deep scarlet red. Cort is still laughing, doubling over when Taliesin digs his palms hard into his eyes. Even his hair feels hot. “You are the  _ worst _ .”

Cort smiles and leans down to look at him, peering around the hands that cover his face. “I learned from the best, though.”


	11. 20 (Part 4) NSFW

They meet the  _ Star Shark _ when she makes berth in the harbor, and spend the evening with her crew making a gentle ruckus on the docks. Taliesin isn’t certain what Cort will make of it all; sailors are still soldiers, but of an entirely different sort than he is accustomed, both more and less disciplined, and overwhelmingly common.

He doesn’t worry for long; Cort engages Veda immediately in an academic discussion about boarding tactics and ship-to-ship combat, and spends several hours surrounded by a thick cloud of the captain’s pipe smoke, ignoring the rest of the room. 

Taliesin would be jealous of Cort’s attention but it’s oddly gratifying to see him interact with new people when he is usually so reserved. He flatters himself that it’s his good influence and doesn’t try to interrupt, spending that time with his shipmates in dice and ale and the time honored tradition of complaining.

It will be Taliesin’s last night in Arrabar, and as they retrace their steps back into the city toward the home that feels again ever so temporary, he can’t help the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. It will all be over soon - the evening, the summer, and  _ this.  _ He doesn’t even really know what  _ this  _ actually  _ is _ because they’ve never put a name to it and until now he’s tried to deceive himself into believing that it wasn’t important.

It is, but it isn’t, because it can’t be.

This was always going to end, he knew that the moment it started. That only makes him more the fool for not already having thought about how he was going to deal with it, with himself and this strangling sense of loss and disappointment. It’s shortsighted, trying to hide from unavoidable pain. He’s loved every moment of this summer, has loved -

It doesn’t matter. It isn’t like there’s anything he can actually do about it, and he’s used to knowing that he wants has never really mattered. It was nice, he supposes, to have lived this for a little while. Every stolen moment is still twice what he deserves.

And what a stupid, childish boy he is anyway, carrying his heart around like water in his hands. It’s such a dangerous thing.

He’s so distracted he trips on an uneven paving stone, so much effort put toward keeping his head held high, his step light. He catches himself before he can fall flat on his face in the street, bounding back upright when Cort looks at him, head tilted faintly to one side. He’s been silent since they left the tavern, seeming deep in thought, and it takes everything Taliesin has not to fill the air with nonsense babbling, talking about the evening (not that remarkable), the beer (the same beer as always), the temperature of the night air (perfectly normal for this time of year), and twenty thousand other idiotic observations that just don’t matter.

Why is he fucking like this? It’s so awful, this feeling like he’s going to come out of his skin, and it gets worse the closer they get to his family’s home, cutting around into a familiar alley to slip in through the garden rather than the main gate. It takes them close to Cort’s quarters and suddenly he’s beside himself at the idea of an impending goodbye.

What will he do? What will he  _ say? _ He should think of something, surely. Nothing is terribly forthcoming, but he fails to notice that Cort has continued to walk without him, strolling onward as Taliesin pauses in the courtyard.

“Are you coming?” he asks, steadfastly ignoring the way that Taliesin can’t keep his hands from wringing together.

_ Shit.  _ He rushes to catch up, falling into step again.

It’s a hard pace to maintain, evidently. The closer they get to his rooms, the more he seems to lose all notion of what it is to walk at a normal speed, either two steps ahead of Cort or one behind, like he’s just circling, circling, circling, but in a straight line. If this is where all of his energy goes, no wonder he’s always tired.

They stop in the hallway outside his door. It’s late and dark, the shadows drawing close around them until it seems that they are alone, the only two people who exist in this moment, like rocks holding steady in a stream, water rushing around them.

He doesn’t feel steady, though. He feels like a sinking ship, listing perilously to one side as it prepares to overturn.

It is not the impression he wants to leave with Cort, doesn’t want his last thoughts to be of Taliesin in yet another cold panic, at the mercy of his own emotions.

“Are you alright?” Cort asks quietly. They’ve just been standing there outside the door and Taliesin can’t even tell how long they’ve been there, how long it’s taken Cort to decide to step in and save him from himself.

He opens his mouth to answer and then smiles. He can feel the apology pulling at the corners of his lips, dragging them cruelly upward. “Not really.”

In the half light Cort takes a step toward him, reaching out to cup Taliesin’s cheek. His hands are warm and gentle, just like his eyes, and when he slides the callused pad of his thumb over Taliesin’s lips he shudders and drops his head, afraid he’ll see pity in them.

“Taliesin.”

“I’m sorry.”

And he is, he really is. Whatever playful moment this should have been is submerging under the roil of his uncertainty, his fear, this sense of loss and emptiness and the way he’s going to miss Cort, is already missing, has already lost-

Cort kisses him in the middle of the hallway, and it abruptly shuts down the wild spin of his mind with something like shock. They’re - in public. Sort of. Not behind closed doors with locks and the curtains drawn, someone could  _ see _ them, some hapless passerby-

He doesn’t have the wherewithal to pull away, but he tilts his head back, breaking the kiss. “We aren’t-”

“I don’t care.” Cort kisses him again and he immediately loses ground in his objections. In his position too; he feels the wood of the door against his back, Cort’s chest against his, hands framing his face as though this is a serious moment with a point to be driven home.

He sees what Cort is doing, understands why, and he loves - he loves him for it.

But he also knows better.

“I do, though,” he says, in time, when the kiss ends and Cort draws back for breath and to look into his face. Those blue eyes are eviscerating, will pierce clean through whatever screen of hapless bullshit Taliesin will try to erect, and so instead he offers a small smile and unlocks his door to let them in. What happens to him doesn’t matter, but Cort will have to live here after he’s gone, and if it was worthwhile this summer to pretend that this, whatever  _ this _ is, wasn’t happening, he isn’t about to ruin the illusion as he exits the stage. He is a  _ much  _ better player than that, after all.

His room feels cold and empty, as though it’s been preparing for his absence. He lets Cort in and follows after, turning his back for a moment to collect himself as he latches the door, checking and rechecking that it’s locked. There, that’s - better. Maybe. He doesn’t even really know anymore, but he manages not to flinch when he feels Cort’s warm hands on his arms.

“You’re shaking.”

“Am I?” he asks distantly, just assuming that it’s true. That seems like something he’d do.

Cort’s hand moves upward, strong fingers stroking over his shoulders, to touch the back of his neck. It’s such a gentle thing that Taliesin immediately wants to dissolve, hot tears burning beneath closed eyelids.

Cort doesn’t even ask, just turns him about and pulls him into his arms. They are much of a size, but Taliesin could hide inside him forever, curl up small and unnoticeable in some corner of Cort’s heart, folded up like a piece of paper.

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.”

“I-” he doesn’t have anything else to say, his clever tongue failing him utterly. He steps back and takes Cort with him until they’re leaning against the door again, on the inside this time, where it’s safe. Safer. Something.

Cort dips his head to kiss his collarbone, his neck, the hinge of his jaw. “I’m staying tonight. All night.”

He says it like he expects Taliesin to object, an edge of something stubborn and unyielding in his voice, but Taliesin doesn’t have the energy to argue. And anyway - he wants this. Morning will come too soon, and before then he just -

He wants. Not to think, just to be, to carve this little pocket out of time and hold it dear.

Cort kisses him like they have all of the time in the world; soft, tender, the kind of comfort that fills Taliesin with warmth and chases the chill from his bones. The door behind him holds them both up as Cort presses him against it, his hands on Taliesin’s hips.

It takes nothing to make Taliesin want him. Wanting is where he lives, the air he breathes, the dirt under his fingernails; it just  _ is _ and he lives with it like a fever burning in his skin. It is not a comfortable way to exist, but now he isn’t sure what he’s going to do without it.

_ Don’t think, _ he tells himself.  _ Don’t speak. _

Hotter and faster and harder then. 

He reaches on instinct for the buckle of Cort’s belt, sliding his hands down between their bodies, over the rigid muscle of Cort’s chest and abdomen, only to have Cort guide his hands away, up again. He laces his fingers through Taliesin’s, pins them above his head, splaying him out against the door. They’re no strangers to love games, playing with power, but this isn’t that. Or at least, this isn’t  _ only  _ that.

Cort kisses him like he’s memorizing the way Taliesin tastes, the shape of his mouth, the pointed dart of his tongue. Thorough, methodical, slow. And he - he’s overeager as always, cock hard against the barrier of his breeches, pressed against Cort’s body. It takes every ounce of will he has to keep still, to let Cort do what he needs to, and not try to fling himself at him like some kind of frantic puppy missing his master.

The thought is… not a pleasant one, and not because it feels untrue.

Cort’s mouth moves, down his neck and across his jaw. Taliesin tilts his head back and closes his eyes as Cort works his shirt open, mouth hot against the hollow of his throat, the center of his chest. By the time Cort releases his hands, he’s gripping the doorframe to stay afloat, coming apart lace, button and little sound smothered in the back of his throat, stifled behind a harshly bitten lip. Cort is gentle and it only seems to make it that much  _ more _ , wanting him to do something, to demand something, to put an end to this slow torture. 

He feels Cort’s mouth against him through his breeches and it’s all he can do not to immediately come undone. He wouldn’t be so cruel, surely, as to make him wait -

He’s wrong, of course. Cort is in no hurry. He makes the mistake of looking down, nearly going to his knees when he realizes those blue, blue eyes are trained on his face. Cort’s hands pin his hips, dragging his tongue in a wide swipe over the fastenings of Taliesin’s breeches, rasping against the fabric. 

“Are you trying to kill me?” He hears himself ask, his voice in his ears faint as though coming from far away.

Cort doesn’t answer him and then suddenly there are  _ teeth  _ pressed against his cock, gripping the hard outline of him. It doesn’t hurt, but it sends a hard shiver up his spine and makes him gasp, trying to buck his hips forward and held in place.

“Please,” he says. It’s early, too early to start begging probably, but that’s never stopped him before. He can feel Cort’s hands tighten in their grip, just a momentary flex, a small tell, and then he’s being pulled apart, laces of his breeches coming loose until he’s free.

It’s almost painful, this need to be touched. He already feels swollen to bursting, and when Cort draws his tongue along the underside of his cock, his hands clench to fists so tight he can feel the bones in his fingers grind together. Again and again, almost enough, almost there, until all he can do with himself is clutch his rucked up shirt into the center of his chest, holding on for dear life.

He could just come but - well he always  _ can _ , he just never does. He’s too tangled up in it, like a puppet dangling from some invisible string, all caught up in Cort’s fingers. 

“Cort,” he says, not sure if the shape of his name is a warning or a plea.

“Not yet,” he answers back, between long swipes of his tongue, whispered like a prayer against the underside of Taliesin’s cock. “Just let me.”

He shudders once and then can’t seem to stop. He isn’t sure what Cort means but it goes against his instinct to question it. He can’t watch anymore, if he watches he’ll lose himself, and so he turns his face to the darkened ceiling as Cort takes command of his body.

He can barely keep to his feet by the time Cort decides to show even a modicum of mercy, pulling his mouth from Taliesin’s cock to place searing kisses across his thighs, his hips, his stomach. Taliesin is raw, overheated, oversensitive; each kiss makes his cock jump, desperate for just one touch more.

It doesn’t happen the way he thinks. Cort sits back on his heels, slides his hands down Taliesin’s thighs, his calves, and unlaces his boots. It’s - odd. He doesn’t think he’s ever had anyone remove his shoes before, but they go by the wayside, his trousers too, and when Cort rises to his feet it’s for Taliesin’s shirt. Then he’s just naked, bared, exposed, nothing to hide behind but a smile that won’t come and a hard cock that desperately wants to.

Sometimes he’s just pieces of a thing all strung together with wire, but Cort looks at him like he’s more than that.

Sometimes that makes him feel so very dangerous.

He reaches out to tangle his hands into the collar of Cort’s shirt and yanks, pulling them both hard against the door. Cort catches himself on the frame, arms braced to either side of Taliesin’s shoulders. He’s still at first, reservedly weighing his options when Taliesin turns the tide, but his mouth makes demands that need to be answered in kind, and he fists a hand in Taliesin’s hair to hold him as he tears at his clothes.

Not too hard; Cort still has to walk out of here come morning like a gentleman, but he needs bare skin, needs to feel -

He gets Cort out of his shirt, belt flung away and breeches undone before Cort wrests back the upper hand, picking him up bodily and hauling him across the room.

It’s ridiculous, he’s heavy and tall and altogether an ungainly package, and he laughs, amused and baffled and embarrassed when Cort dumps them both on the bed.

“More of that,” he says, and kisses Taliesin’s smiling mouth. “I like to hear you.”

“You want to hear me… laughing.”

“Well.” Cort grins, sliding a hand down to curl around Taliesin’s cock, bringing it back to full throbbing life. “Other things too.”

They stay that way until Taliesin loses all sense of time, halfway pinioned under Cort’s weight; one arm is trapped under his side, the other loosely held above his head, their fingers twined together but no less restrained for the softness. He makes a practice of begging and, when Cort finally reaches for the jar of oil in the bedside table, he starts to plead in earnest.

Cort alternates, light strokes over his aching cock, the slide of a finger inside him, slowing whenever Taliesin twitches, goes rigid, curses, balancing him on the edge until Taliesin is convinced his heart will either stop or explode out of his chest.

He begs and Cort torments him and he just suffers it until Cort is satisfied. There is never a way for him to anticipate where that port of harbor lies, but he feels almost delirious when he hears the sound of boots hitting the floor and feels the full heat of Cort’s naked body against his.

“I’m going to let you come,” he says, as though it’s the most reasonable thing that anyone has ever said. “But not until I’m inside you.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Cort’s hand is still on his fucking cock. 

“For you to ask nicely.”

Taliesin stares up at him for a long moment of disbelief, and then bursts out laughing. Hasn’t he been doing just that for the better part of an hour?

“Oh mighty Sir Raghnall, would you please have sex with -  _ ah!” _

He doesn’t even get to finish the thought, the words blurring into an untidy jumble on his lips as Cort pushes forward, in to the hilt.

He’s no stranger to this sensation, not anymore, but he’s so  _ ready _ he feels almost raw. He can feel himself bearing down, his cock throbbing where it’s pressed between their bodies. Cort hovers over him, arms braced to either side of Taliesin’s shoulders, and leans down to brush his mouth over his lips, even the slightest shift of his weight evoking a whimper that he swallows in a kiss.

“A pity I can’t send that smart mouth off to sea and keep the rest of you.”

Even buried in Taliesin’s body, Cort always manages to sound so controlled. It’s hardly fair.

“You like my smart mouth,” he accuses, just to see Cort smile.

“It is a very nice mouth,” Cort agrees, amicable to a fault, and that is the last they speak for a long time, tasting each other in the half-dark, bodies intertwined.

It’s Taliesin who pulls away at last, nails biting into the solid muscle of Cort’s shoulders, thighs flexed tight, legs trembling. “Can’t-” he manages, his rapidly waning will to hold out abbreviated to the only word he seems to be able to muster. 

“Doesn’t matter.” The words are said gently enough, but there is a glint of something in those ocean eyes that steals Taliesin’s breath away. Something fierce and possessive, remorselessly covetous.

Taliesin can break himself into as many pieces as he wants to; Cort won’t be through with him until  _ Cort _ is satisfied. 

He’s figured out by now that often that takes a  _ very _ long time.

The thought is enough to drag him under, pleasure rolling over him in a swell that starts in his spine and ripples outward, a deep shaking beneath the waves. His mind goes blank, blissful and serene, testing the edges of unconsciousness; when he comes back to himself, Cort is watching him, stone still.

Taliesin blinks. Cort smiles. His hips move.

By the time they’re finished, Cort has subjected him to every dirty trick in the book - in  _ his  _ book, often enough - and it's all he can do to keep his chin above water. He’s drowning in oil and sweat and everything else; Cort still pushes into him, a perpetual shuddering motion that ends with the rap of their hips together and then begins anew. He’s slowing, struggling, hands so hard on Taliesin’s upper arms there will be marks come tomorrow. He no longer looks into Taliesin’s face, eyes closed and brow furrowed as though in deep concentration or terrible pain.

It makes a kind of sense. If it’s over then it’s  _ over -  _ or one step closer to, at least. 

“Cort,” he says, and his voice is surprisingly steady for the fist clenched around his heart. He’s never seen Cort break; he’s not like Taliesin, he just - doesn’t. The idea of him hurting, of him having to hurt, makes Taliesin want to disappear.

“Look at me,” he orders softly, his hands framing Cort’s face. Cort turns his lips into Taliesin’s palm but doesn’t open his eyes. “Look at me, love.”

It’s not something he says - that either of them say. It’s too powerful a word for something that feels so doomed. It’s not like it is in the fairytales; it can’t conquer anything. Still, it’s… something. And he wants to leave Cort with  _ something _ , something more than just another empty space.

Cort stops.  He’s half in and half out of him, poised on the edge of another long slide, balanced so delicately in the in-between. His eyes are dark, pupils blown wide with desire and shadow, blue as changeable as the sea. 

When he looks, he  _ looks _ , way down deep like he can see clear through to the bottom of Taliesin’s soul. It makes Taliesin quake, afraid of what he'll find there, afraid that it’s something ugly, damaged, or worse - that there’s just nothing, nothing at all.

There is always so much that Cort will never say, too, trying to walk the razor’s edge and not cut his feet, for both their sakes. But he doesn’t flinch, because he never does. And doesn’t look away.

Taliesin pulls him down, in, until their bodies fit and he can kiss Cort’s lips. Cort’s dark hair spills over his hands and he wraps his fingers in it, anchoring himself, holding on, just  _ holding  _ as Cort drops to the bed, chest to chest, and wraps him in his arms. It’s crushing, like he’s swum down as far as he can into the depths and the water presses in all around, but he endures it. It’s safe here. Perhaps the only safe place he’s ever been.

Cort pushes into him, sinks in deep, and comes.


	12. 20 (Part 5) NSFW

He doesn’t think he’ll sleep, so unused to the presence of another person in his bed, but he wakes up sometime in the hours before dawn to find himself wrapped in Cort’s arms, back against his broad chest, Cort's chin pressed to the crown of his head. He’s not sure that Cort has slept at all; the instant he shifts he can feel fingers in his hair, soft and slow. It makes him wonder how many times he’s stirred fitfully in his sleep and been soothed.

Like a child, he laments. Sometimes he still has bad dreams. It isn't something he shares with other people, but  _ this  _ will only ever happen once so he can hardly say that it matters.

“Have you been awake this whole time?” His voice is thick with sleep, the words soft and slurring on his tongue in the quiet dark.

Behind him Cort stretches, resettling his arm beneath Taliesin’s head. “I've been watching you sleep. Don't make that face.”

“Amn’t,” he immediately objects, burrowing in to hide though he knows perfectly well Cort can't actually see his expression. Cort chuckles softly, the vibration of his chest soothing. “You'll be tired.”

“Then I'll sleep.”  _ Once you're gone _ he means, but he doesn't say. It's… sensible. It just reminds Taliesin of the time, of what little of it they have left.

He isn't sure what to do or what to say, lapsing into familiar silence as Cort's thumb strokes along the inside of his forearm, over the spiral patterned wave crest inked into his skin. He draws his arm back, needing no reminders.

“You called me love.”

It isn't a question, and Cort sounds… calm. Not even curious, as though he's merely repeating something they both know to be true. And it  _ is  _ true. He waits for the anxiousness, for the cold drop in the pit of his stomach, and is surprised when it doesn't come. Perhaps he's too tired; perhaps this was simply inevitable.

“So I did.”

“You love me then.”

It still isn't a question but something in it begs an answer. He digs the heels of his palms into his eyes and laughs with all the humor he doesn't feel, hangman’s noose around his throat. “I always have.”

He's ten years old and Cort is picking him up out of the dirt. He's twenty and Cort is doing the same thing, and he still doesn't have to. Taliesin is nothing to him, Taliesin is - nothing.

Now he feels it, that hopeless clutch. He stiffens, shifting between the sheets to sit up like he expects to be told to go - and he  _ will _ go, nevermind that it's his bed, his room. They're also his errant emotions, never doing as they're told, and -

Cort's arm tightens around his waist, drawing them back together. Cort is  _ hard _ , rigid against the back of his thigh and as soon as he realizes he freezes in place like a rabbit in the shadow of a hawk, afraid to run and afraid not to.

“I’m-”

“Do not. Apologize.” He feels lips against the back of his neck, the top of his shoulder, gentle to soften the sudden harshness of the words. “Just let me,” Cort says, all honey and liquid smoke in the darkness, and Taliesin unclenches his fists, smoothes the palms of his hands over the rumpled sheets, ready to give him anything.

They start on their sides, languid and slow, so still Taliesin thinks he will scream with the heaviness of it, the thick emotion in his throat that turns the very air to water. He’s grateful when Cort turns them over and stretches Taliesin out across the bed, back to chest and his eyes closed, cheek pressed to the mattress. His arms go numb beneath him, clutching Cort’s hands against his chest as he loses himself again, coming apart with a sound too much like a sob.

Cort still doesn't say it back. Taliesin is almost glad.

Neither of them even try to sleep after that. 

Cort sits up against the headboard with Taliesin in his arms, half in and out of his lap. He just breathes, listens to Cort’s heart beat, holding on to the dark while he can as the world turns slowly gray and light around them, birds calling in the garden for dawn.

It’s not  _ so  _ sad, he tells himself. The loss is painful and he’ll wear it like a scar, but Taliesin has plenty of scars, and he thinks maybe he won’t miss something he was never meant to have in the first place. At least, if the gods are kind, not for long. 

Really it’s a dream, a wish, more than it is anything he really believes, but here, in a moment like this, he can’t help but feel that he’s been so terribly lucky. And anyway, he doesn’t want to ruin this with tears. He may never come back. If he does, everything will be different.

The sun is halfway up the horizon before Cort moves, the tightening of his hold heralding its ultimate release. Taliesin can feel it like an oncoming swell, bracing himself against the deck.

“Just stay alive,” Cort says, and it isn’t a request. He takes Taliesin’s face in his hands and kisses him, once, and slips away, a farewell like the last glimpse of land left behind. 

Taliesin bathes, packs, and walks down to the harbor alone, where the  _ Star Shark _ sways on the waves and the sea waits to take him back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I wrote these in 'parts' that kind of loosely correspond to how I think of different periods in Taliesin's life. This is/was the end of Part I.


	13. 21 (Part 1)

The sea welcomes him back without question, the horizon open like arms (like legs) that he can lose himself between. 

So he makes it his whole life.

It’s easy to do. The routine is a simple one to fall into, and Taliesin can’t be sad in front of the men. It’s not that they won’t understand; it's not like there’s much else to do sometimes but play cards and talk and show off old tattoos of past loves like the battle scars they are, but this is -

It’s private. And maybe he just wants to sit alone in his pain for a little while, until there’s time and distance enough to round down all the sharp edges. It still cuts sometimes, the idea of what might have been, but he’d gone into his affair with Cort with open eyes and no delusions. It seems stupid to mourn something that never truly existed.

He still does though. Just a little bit.

He still thinks about it all the time.


	14. 21 (Part 2) NSFW

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Chapter warnings: prostitution**

He really should fix this bed. The sound of it creaking is a shrill gale in his ears, the wood and metal straining against itself with every rocking motion so loudly that it seems as though it will come apart beneath them, the tatty headboard bouncing up against the worn wall behind it like a drunken war drummer, banging mistakenly on the rim instead of the head. There’s a squeal when Claire grinds against him, a shriek when he lifts his hips, and it would not surprise him in the least if the whole thing were to become completely unglued and crash straight through the floor of the brothel and into the tavern below.

It’s too easy to picture the wide eyed consternation of the patrons, their slack mouthed gaping at the spectacle before them. Well, he’s been a spectacle before; the thought of it makes him laugh.

Above him Claire moans, one of those deep, groaning sounds that sends a shiver straight to his cock, her head flung back to expose the length of a pale throat, a nighttime creature that shuns the light of the sun. Ravenous too; she swallows down the length of him like its something she wants to devour, and - he’s getting ahead of himself, can’t think about that now or the short work he’ll make of things will be hardly worth her ef

She’s a sight, her auburn hair dark with sweat and sticking to her temples, her breasts half out of the flimsy little thing she wears under her dress, all threadbare lace and silk so sheer it almost doesn’t exist. He likes her thighs best though, round and athletic, soft enough to dig his fingers into and feel the muscle bunching underneath as she pulls herself up and down the length of his cock.

“Taliesin,” she says, a mock-seriousness to her voice as it shapes his name. “If you stop doing that, I will cut your fingers off.”

“Seems fair,” he returns, equally grave, though it’s hard to keep the amusement from his tone. His hands wrap her hips, one thumb stretched to press into the swollen bundle of nerves between her thighs. He knows the way she likes to be touched, the way he needs to hold steady, keep pressure, roll the pad of his thumb just so. He watched her do it, the first time, but he likes to be polite, and anyway he likes a lover enjoy to themselves.

Especially one he’s paying. The job is unpleasant - or can be, at least - and Taliesin tries to make a habit of never being too much work. It’s meant to be fun, and he’s good about finding the ones who will treat it like a game, like he does.

It’s never enough just to come.

“Taliesin.”

“Claire.”

_ “Taliesin.” _

_ “Claire.” _

Taliesin can come whenever he wants, but she’s getting close, her hands on his chest and her cunt grinding down on top of him, rocking the bed harshly to every syllable.

It’s on purpose, of course. He’s not one of those clients who has to hear his name or be made to feel like this is anything real, but it’s - well it’s funny when she does it, and they both know it, and that’s why she does it at all.

“Tal-ie-sin.”  _ Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. _

“Cla-aire,” he says back, stretching out her name with a smile on his lips, and she’s grinning, delighted, at him, at the ceiling, as her body arches and her muscles clench down all around him. It takes him only a moment after that, bucking her nearly off the bed as his hips snap upward, once, twice, and he empties himself into her body.

They collapse on the bed next to each other with a massive squalling of metal that they both ignore, sweaty, breathing hard and satisfied. Claire doesn’t bother to tuck her breasts away, just flings one soft thigh over both of his legs as she curls on her side, head propped up on her hand. Taliesin eyes her, narrowing his gaze in mock suspicion.

“What, beautiful?”

Claire grins at him. “I think I’m actually going to miss you.”

Taliesin laughs at that, because it’s exactly the kind of thing a whore says to someone who’s bought her, but he does think she actually means it. That’s what he likes about Claire; she never really seems called to do much pretending. All the same, she swats his arm. 

“Don’t laugh, you insensitive git.”

“I’ll come back to see you.”

Claire rolls her eyes, because that is also exactly the kind of thing someone says to a whore he’s bought. “I know you sailors, always with your orders. Not that it’s not useful, mind.” She smirks at him in a way that makes his flagging cock stir against his thigh, the damn thing with a mind of its own. “I’ll just miss that dick.”

“ _ Just _ the dick?”

“The fingers and tongue too, I suppose. The other bits...” she trails off intentionally, as though she could leave the rest of him, and he finds himself laughing again at the faux insult.

He rolls over neatly, pinning her under his weight and settling between her open thighs. “You wound me.”

Claire smirks, grabs him by the chin. “I could. Then you’d remember me, wouldn’t you?”

“As if I could forget.  _ Tal-ie-sin _ ,” he mimics, grinding his cock - hard again with so little encouragement - against the vee of her thighs. The bed screams obligingly.

Claire gives his cheek a light slap, laughing as he turns his head to press a grinning kiss against her palm. “Got one more in you then?”

“For you? I’ve got all day.”

*

He finally makes it out of the Weeping Willy (the best and worst name, possibly ever) around mid-afternoon, lighter most of his gold and several stripes of skin off his back where Claire’s fingernails claimed their prize. It won’t scar, it's nothing that extreme, but it’s a pleasantly twinging reminder beneath the material of his shirt as he walks, hands in pockets, through the streets of the city. The  _ Star Shark _ has finished its resupply and they’ll be on their way again at the turn of the tide, back out into open water for another patrol.

At this point it’s routine, but it’s always exciting. He loves the way the ship feels under his feet when the wind billows in the sails, the wood and ropes like a living thing, a powerful body thrusting against the waves, conquering the elements.

Even sated as he is, he’s going to think about sex for the rest of the afternoon. Claire knows her business.

He rounds the corner of a warehouse and collides with the wetly familiar sound of someone hurling up their guts, the accompanying low voice enough to make him stop and peer down the alley at the source of the noise.

Taliesin sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose. “Rix, what the fuck.”

The boy, skinny, no more than seventeen, looks green up to the line of his sandy blonde hair. “Sorry Taliesin, I thought I could-”

Taliesin recoils automatically when what is probably cheap ale and street food splatters the side of the warehouse wall. He turns his gaze on the older sailor holding Rix up by one arm and the scruff of his neck, his head tilting to one side in accusation. “You did this, didn’t you.”

Marv just laughs, the lines in his weatherbeaten face exaggerated in mirth like a sketched caricature of himself. “Boy thought he could hang.”

“With  _ you?” _

Marv shrugs, completely uninsulted. “Rite of passage?”

“You’re terrible and you should feel terrible. The Captain is going to kill him.”

That makes Rix wail and then vomit again, and Taliesin rolls his eyes, sighing deeply before he picks his way through the refuse in the alley to where they stand. “I told you not to do this.”

Rix whimpers. “I know.”

All he can do is shake his head, pulling a waterskin from his belt and a handkerchief from his pocket. “Open.” 

Rix does as he says, opening his mouth for the stream of water Taliesin pours into it, and then spits, shuddering. Taliesin hands him the handkerchief to mop up with, and then pulls a face when the boy tries to hand it back.

“You just - keep that. Marv, what the fuck did you feed him?”

Marv just shrugs, delighted by the entire thing. “Took him down to Doxie’s.”

“You complete ass.”

“I know, right?”

“Shouldn’t I have gone?” Rix asks plaintively, still propped against the wall with one arm.

“No. You never trust Marv on food or drink. His stomach lining is made of spite and metal.”

Rix looks like he’s going to cry, or curl up and just lie on the disgusting ground, and Taliesin sighs. This is not the way he planned to spend his last few hours of shore leave, but- annoyed, and a tiny bit amused despite himself, he reaches to pull Rix’s arm over his shoulder and turns them toward the street. “Don’t feel bad. He did this too me too, my first time at port.”

“Hardly needed any encouragement, as I recall. Boy was built to fuck a whore.”

Taliesin shoots Marv a scathing look over Rix’s bowed head, and then just rolls his eyes. “You’re such a dick.”

“That’s what she said.”

*

By the time they’ve fed and watered young Rix, it’s pushing evening. They’re meant to be back before the eighth bell when the summer sun goes down, all in before the morning departure. 

The captain is of the opinion that hangovers are bad form, which Taliesin wholeheartedly believes is because he has a gin still for a liver. He’s never seen the man so much as belch, but the man can put rum away by the bottle. Marv told him once that Veda’s tobacco pipe was enchanted with a charm against drunkenness, but then Marv also claimed that he’d once kissed a mermaid and a Mulan princess on the same night, before losing a month’s pay to a cobbler on a cockfight and getting tossed out of a bar in nothing but his pants.

Honestly it could all be true, but he just never really knows with Marv. He’s been a sailor longer than Taliesin has even been alive; even the stories Taliesin knows are true sound completely insane.

Nonetheless, young Rix looks a sight less green by the time they’ve made their way down to where the  _ Star Shark _ is berthed, bobbing lightly on the water in the harbor. She’s a beautiful and fearsome looking thing in movement, all graceful mast and billowing sail, and Taliesin is as much in love with her as he is the sea in general. The fears he once had of its openness, its emptiness, have been banished by the thrill of the wind in his hair and the salt spray against his face. He has his duties of course, but this is the most freedom he’s ever had. There isn’t anything he misses.

Well, mostly.


	15. 22 (Part 1) Mildly NSFW

He dreams, sometimes.

It doesn’t happen often anymore; usually he’s tired enough that all he has to do is flop down in his bunk and he’s out like a snuffed candle until morning. That’s what he prefers, because his dreams are never really safe things. He used to wake up in cold sweats at the beginning, imagining that the creaking of the ship was the creak of a door hinge in the night, visualizing figures that hovered over him in his sleep, dark and malevolent in familiar shapes. 

That stopped quickly though, and it seemed he was always quiet enough. At least no one would admit to being disturbed, and it’s hard to toss and turn in a hammock and not rattle oneself out onto the floor. The sea is a pleasant bedmate most of the time, but there are always the  _ other _ dreams. He wakes up sweating and damp after those too, but it’s not quite the same.

Much more awkward, those. Even if he can’t always remember what they’re about.

Sometimes they make him miss Arrabar, though, and the smell of cedar chips and flowers off a white pear tree. They leave a tightness in his chest that takes all day to ease.

He wakes from one of those dreams that morning, of all mornings. Later he’ll wonder if it wasn’t a message from the gods, some latent precognition that only alerts him to impending doom when it’s too late to step out of the way, but in the moment he is only annoyed. It’s hot, someone is snoring, his dick is hard. There isn’t much he can do about that now unless he feels like being unsubtle or extremely quiet beneath his blanket, but it feels like it’s ten million degrees, his shirt is sticking to him uncomfortably, and he just resolves to let it pass.

He breathes, slow and steady, trying to calm the thrum of need in his blood, hands clenching and unclenching on the edges of the hammock as though he’s retraining his heart to beat, pulse slowing from a sprint.

It’s cruel that he can remember. He was back there again, cool beneath his mother’s tree, the shadows swaying with the breeze as honeyed lips took his mouth.

It’s bullshit. He’s never kissed anyone beneath that tree in his whole life, but his palms still itch to be pressed against the contour of a muscled chest, to feel the rigid outline of a hard cock against his -

That’s not helping. He reaches to rub the sleep from his eyes with the heels of his palms, which is about all he can rub at this point, and lets the gentle ache of a wound mostly healed lull away the false memories.

It’s just a dream, which was all it ever was in the first place.

He manages to calm himself, to dress, stumbling out into the overly bright light of the sun as it scorches down across the main deck. It’s barely morning but the city radiates a heat all of its own, reflecting off the stone piers and buildings, reeking of fish guts and refuse. He can’t wait to be back out to sea, where it’s cool and quiet, and -

Cort Raghnall is on his ship.

He must be losing his mind.

Well _ this _ has never happened before, a quiet part of his mind remarks, aloof and skeptical while the rest of him freezes in place like a deer in the woods at the snap of a twig. He’s never had a waking dream, unless he counts hallucinations he’s had from too much drink and other things. Maybe he has heatstroke - someone should wake him up soon and give him some water or he might die. He turns to look back at his bunk, almost expecting to see his unconscious body hanging there, and is startled to find it empty.

_ What the fuck. _

Cort is standing there plain as day next to the main mast, a trunk at his feet and a bag slung over one shoulder, talking to someone Taliesin can’t see.

Or at least, someone who  _ looks  _ a lot like Cort. Someone with dark hair pulled into a familiar ponytail, with broad shoulders and height enough to kill himself against a low door frame. Someone who Taliesin thinks he may have once seen naked, arched up off of a bed with more rippling abdominals than is reasonable and a hard cock in someone’s mouth.

His bed. His mouth.  _ Fuck. _

He does the only thing he can think to do and flees.

*

The captain is in the navigation room when Taliesin lets himself in unannounced, standing over the map table bolted to the wall. He doesn’t look up when the door opens and closes, and the room is full of his pipe smoke, leaking slowly out the open windows at the stern.

Perhaps the intrusion is overly familiar, but he and Veda have a sort of understanding. The captain is close mouthed but perceptive, and at least has never shown any inclination to try and beat some of Taliesin’s less disciplined tendencies out of him. Not that it would have worked, anyway. Maybe Veda knows that.

Or maybe Veda just doesn’t care and he’s mad, mad as a fucking loon and dying of heatstroke below decks right now.

Taliesin rakes his hands through his hair, sweat gathering at his temples and damp down his back. “I think I’m losing my mind.”

“You know you’re at least supposed to knock.”

“Sorry. Sir,” he adds, when Veda does finally look up at him. There are lines at the corners of his hooded eyes, permanent shadows beneath them; the captain has the look of a man who has raised far too many children, a kind of steady, unflappable annoyance that has always made Taliesin feel absurdly safe in his company.

It’s not that Veda isn’t dangerous, it’s just that he’s not irrational. Taliesin doesn’t have to be on his toes at all times, waiting to see which way the wind will blow. The situation is always under control.

Ironically the only other person to ever make him feel that way is Cort. He rubs his eyes and imagines the smell of cedar on his hands.

“Are you ill?”

“Maybe.”

“What’s wrong with you.” It’s not just a question, it’s a confirmation.

Taliesin laughs. “I think I’m seeing things.”

Veda lets him explain, and really it doesn’t take too much time. It’s absolutely ridiculous, the sound of all these words spilling out of his mouth. He’s not even sure they  _ are  _ words, just garbled syllables hopefully arranged in the right order as he explains to his captain of six whole years that he thinks he’s hallucinated the only man he’s ever loved on the deck of their ship.

He leaves that part out, of course. The love part. Not that it particularly matters except he’s trying to be professional.

Right. Professional. He sounds like a fucking child, crying at the shapes the shadows make in the dark corners of the room.

Veda doesn’t say anything, watching him more than listening until Taliesin finally just stops, like a faucet turned off at the taps. The captain’s thick brows go up thoughtfully, deepening the perpetual creases in his weathered skin. He’s still puffing away on his ever-present pipe as he takes Taliesin by the arm and guides him toward the door.

There’s part of him that thinks the captain is just going to chuck him out, and it wouldn’t even be the first time, but Veda walks with him to the railing overlooking the main deck below.

There is no mistaking those blue, blue eyes, not even from this far away. Cort looks up, right at them, right at  _ him _ , and stops with feet planted firmly on the deck.

He should do something here, say something. Wave maybe, like a total jackass, but he can’t. Taliesin looks at the captain instead and asks the only question he can string together words to say.

“Did my father have anything to do with this, sir?”

He tries not to bring up his father overmuch; the captain is  _ not _ fond. Their mutual dislike of Dorhal is one of the reasons he thinks they get on so well, though Veda has never let on what happened between the two of them to warrant favors owed, or even how they met. The captain is a good captain; he’s always treated Taliesin fairly, even though he doesn’t have to. 

It’s not even the question he wants answered most, but somehow this seems safer than anything else. 

But maybe it isn’t. The captain turns to look at him, and he can’t read the expression in his eyes. “Don’t you ever write home, son?”

Numbly, he shakes his head. It’s not that he hasn’t tried, he just -

He can go through a whole stack of parchment and never write a meaningful word, scratching out line after line after line of pleasant nonsense and heartfelt lies, never quite able to wrap his tongue or his quill around the truth. He's fed every attempt to the sea, and eventually he just stopped trying.

“I suppose you’d better talk to him, then.”


	16. 22 (Part 2) Mildly NSFW

He doesn’t do it immediately, the - talking.

First of all, they’re legitimately busy for several hours, preparing the ship to leave port and heading out onto the open sea. Then Navigator Salsk wants to watch him plot a course for their patrol that takes into account a spate of storm winds on the distant horizon, standing over him breathing onions while Taliesin does the math.

It’s not boring, not exactly. It reminds him of the lessons he and Jorran shared as children, working through the equations of angles under their tutor’s watchful eye. It’s so much better when there’s something real to it, even if it’s just the adjustment of the rudder. And anyway, he doesn’t have much of a choice - he’s well educated and the captain wants to make a proper officer out of him, so this is necessary.

When he’s free again Cort has disappeared, down to get settled into one of the mate’s bunks below decks. Taliesin doesn’t know that necessarily, hasn’t been told, but it makes sense. It’s where he has to stop himself from going, his whole body tilting like a lodestone in Cort’s direction. That is nothing at all new, but he’s already made enough of a spectacle of himself today, and anyway why not torture himself with a thousand possible but unlikely scenarios that might lead his old lover and childhood best friend to suddenly appear, far removed from anywhere it makes sense for him to be?

There has to be something wrong, he’s convinced. Something has happened, or is happening, or is about to happen. Something will collapse this little bubble he’s created for himself, this little pocket of space outside of everything he’s left behind. Why else would he be here? Cort is loyal, biddable, above questioning. If he’s been sent here to do something, that something will be done. Taliesin just isn’t sure where that leaves  _ him _ .

He also hasn’t necessarily found a way to explain why Cort wouldn’t just pull him off the ship then and there if that’s what he’d come to do, rather than  _ join  _ them,  _ incomprehensibly _ , on a voyage out to fucking sea, but then Taliesin is not always good at thinking things through. Especially with a tight fist of panic around his throat.

He’s a coward too, skipping dinner in the mess because he still doesn’t know what to say.

“What’s got your goat?” Marv demands, bouncing a piece of hardtack off the back of his head when he finds Taliesin sitting tucked up in the bow of the ship. He curses and rubs the spot, and then shrugs and eats the bread. No need to let it go to waste.

“Nothing,” he says around a handful of crumbs, the dry texture sucking up all the moisture in his mouth.

“You’re a shitty liar.”

“Rude.”

“Are you getting yanked again?”

Taliesin regards him evenly, crumbling a bit of hardtack in his fingers. “What, my dick?”

Marv rolls his eyes. “You’re too young to be such an asshole. Is your daddy dragging you  back?”

Taliesin starts to scoff at the idea, trying to ride his automatic flippancy into something sarcastic enough to deflect Marv’s inconvenient interest, but the cold sinking feeling in his stomach stops him. He puts the rest of the hardtack down; Marv eats it out of habit.

“I don’t know.”

“Well go find out.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Why?”

Shit.  _ Stupid. _ He absolutely doesn’t want to explain, but Marv is a fucking dickhead who’s seen and done it all, and he seems to recognize Taliesin’s sulk for exactly what it is.

“That’s the one, then. The one you told me about - the boy from that one summer.” 

They're all just  _ boys _ to Marv. “Shut up.”

Marv grins, rolling his wiry rigger’s shoulders into a shrug. “Nothing to be embarrassed about. Being a little bent’s not a bad thing.”

“That’s not even-  _ ugh.” _

“The captain know you two spent all summer fucking?”

If Marv is any more coarse he’d be a fucking dildo made of sand and broken glass. Usually it doesn’t bother Taliesin,  _ usually  _ he thinks it’s funny, but this time it just makes him put his head in his hands. “I don’t know.”

“Sorry, too close to home.”

He doesn’t even know what that means anymore, he just wishes Marv would shut the hell up. He doesn’t want the unsolicited advice he already knows he’s going to get, because Marv will tell him exactly what he already knows.

“You should just go talk to him.” And there it is. It still feels like a slap in the face - a small, annoying one, like someone is trying to wake him up in the most irritating way possible. “Don’t fuck him, though, the captain will have your ass.” Marv pauses. “You’d probably like it.”

“Thanks for that.”

“Anytime.” Marv grins, irrationally unperturbed by the entire exchange, and claps him on the shoulder. “Now stop being a pouty twat. Ship’s not that big, you can’t hide from him forever.”

*

He’s still making all the wrong choices when he finally goes below. It’s late, the lights are so dim he can hardly see, and for all he knows Cort is already asleep.

Maybe he just wants him to be. That would make it easier to put off, certainly, just let this evening slip away and convince himself that he will deal with it all properly in the morning. As if he’s going to go to sleep in his stupid little bunk and wake up a smarter, wiser, braver man.

He feels guilty too. Whatever has brought him here, it’s probably not Cort’s fault. His friend, his - whatever they are - likely has no more choice in the matter than he does. There’s no point in either of them suffering through their orders alone.

There’s a thin strip of brightness under the closed door that flickers when he knocks, a moment passing before he hears the rustle of cloth and quiet footsteps across the wooden flooring. The light turns blinding when he opens the door and for a moment all he can see is a familiar silhouette, dark and haloed by the glow of the lantern behind.

The image resolves itself quickly enough, sharpening into a set of features so familiar it makes his heart ache.

He’s still beautiful. 

Taliesin isn’t sure why that thought comes with a feeling so much like surprise. Cort has always been attractive. The height, the sturdy frame, the unexpected contrast of dark hair and light eyes - there is literally  _ nothing  _ there that doesn’t appeal. That square jaw has stopped women in the street. Men too, plenty of times. 

Maybe it’s only that he forgot. Just a little. Just enough that time and distance and his own certainty in the inevitable had softened the memories somewhat, a faint haze over the recollection like a weathered green patina on bronze.

That last night he spent with Cort in his bed, in his arms - it seems so long ago.

“Hi,” he says, because he can’t think of anything else to say.

“Hi,” Cort returns, and just the sound of his voice makes Taliesin want to die. It’s pitched quiet, like a secret, low and husky and  _ fuck  _ if he doesn’t feel it right at the base of his spine. That is  _ not _ \- he isn’t - fuck,  _ fuck _ , he thought he was over this.  _ Why _ he can’t imagine, when he knows he never gets over anything. He just digs a deeper hole, kicks sand over the whole thing. Buries it.

He wants to slam the door behind him and push Cort down onto the floor, frame those narrow hips with his thighs and curl hands into his shirt and pull until the fabric is shredded in his fingers. He wants to fill his hands with warm skin, dark hair, hard cock, wants to feel hips bucking beneath him and the wet heat of a mouth around his fingers. Wants to bend himself over the rickety pallet bed and -

Taliesin sucks in a deep breath, very aware of his body and of what he must look like right now. The dim lights are suddenly very bright, the air very still. His mouth is dry, there’s sweat down his back, and he’s fucking  _ hard, again, _ aching against the confines of his pants. 

_ Fuck. Fuck fucking fuck. _

“I’m sorry,” he hears himself say, already giving ground, backpedaling until he bounces off the narrow hallway wall.

Cort frowns, dark brows pulling together. He looks - he doesn’t even know. “Taliesin-”

“I can’t. I’m sorry.”

He’s running away again, retreating blindly into the galley where the crew is sleeping and Cort won’t follow him. 


	17. 22 (Part 3)

It storms.

It storms and storms and storms, rain lashing the deck and thunder shaking the sails. Lightning splits the air, striking the waves - miles off, but distance is relative when it’s just you and the sky. The crew works grimly, drying out in shifts, but it’s just a summer squall. After a day it’s clear sailing again, the water sapphire blue and sparkling.

Taliesin loves it. He’d love it more if he wasn’t rabbiting around the ship, slinking through passages like a stowaway. It’s idiotic, there’s nowhere to bloody  _ go _ , and every time he looks Marv is shaking his head in disappointment. 

That’s day three. Day four there’s a ship flying unknown colors on the horizon. 

The  _ Star Shark _ closes, cutting through the water like the sharp edge of a dagger through fine cloth. It’s a merchant vessel, sitting sluggish and heavy; they gain on her easily. He’s on deck with the captain when they draw near enough to see the flagging, ragged sails; the  _ Maiden’s Grace _ is dead in the water.

The tingle at the back of his neck tells him its a trap. Veda concurs and by the time they close the captain has given orders to arm and take positions. He’s on the stern of the ship now, his bow in hand and an arrow loosely on the string. Rix is with him, wound tight and trembling. The boy still hasn’t seen much combat, and he looks a bit wild in the eyes when Taliesin catches his gaze, though he does manage a dry mouthed grin when Taliesin winks.

They veer nimbly toward the drifting ship, slowing as though they mean to board her. The men on the main deck brace themselves, axes and bucklers in hand as the riggers let the wind out of the sails.

A cry goes up from the bow of the ship, wordless in warning as another ship appears, on their starboard side, fading in out of nothing and making straight for them.

“Shit,” Rix swears, and then again when the ship lurches under them, leaping forward as the sails go taut, slack rigging reeled in to catch the wind again. Taliesin reaches out a hand to steady him as the  _ Star Shark  _ surges forward, skirting out of the path of interception.

Veda knows his business; they’ve got favor of the winds and the pursuing ship nearly runs afoul of the  _ Maiden’s Grace _ in trying to wheel about to give chase.

They go to work.

They have the experience, they have the faster ship, and they have Veda. They also have Geralt, perched like a bird in the crow’s nest, who takes the helmsman through the throat with his first arrow. Taliesin sees him fall from the other ship, toppling backwards onto the deck, streamers of bright red down the front of his armor. 

They pull alongside, circling, and Taliesin drops one, wounds another. Rix doesn’t get a shot off, but he also doesn’t panic, falling back to feed Taliesin arrows because he’s not a strong enough marksman to land a shot from where they are.

They trade volleys, barely in range as the the ships close and circle, too far to board. The men on the main deck hunker down behind the rails, bucklers up and Taliesin thinks that perhaps there won’t be much left but to mop up after all is said and done - until there’s a  _ snap boom _ and a hiss like a thousand angry snakeheads and something bright and hot comes hurtling toward them as the enemy spellcaster makes himself known.

_ “Incoming!”  _ Someone shouts and there’s a chaotic scramble out of range as one of the longboats is blown apart, shouting as flames lick over the rigging of the mainsail. Taliesin can feel the heat on his face, oily black smoke curling off the canvas in a blistering wreath.

The second blast hits the sail dead center and the ship judders beneath them, immediately losing momentum. He can see Marv scramble up the smoking ropes, a knife between his teeth, working with a handful of other riggers to drop the sail before the whole thing goes up in flames.

And this is what they get, he thinks in an incongruous moment of clarity, for intentionally springing an obvious trap.

“Oh GODS,” Rix chants behind him, eyes wide and round in a face gone pale. “Oh gods,  _ ohgodsohgodsohgods- _ ” and behind that distantly the sound of the captain shouting orders, controlling the chaos.

“Get back!” He shouts, pushing the boy away from the railing. “For fuck’s sake, get down you fool, and stay-"

Rix is already crouching down behind the bulkhead when everything  _ really  _ goes to shit, the disorienting shimmer and snap of reality bending as two figures melt out of the air and materialize in front of them. He has just enough time to register the gleam of a clean shaven skull and a red shirt that seems uncharitably bright in the sun before a thunderous crack splits the air and he's flying, thrown back by an invisible wave of force that splinters part of the railing into shards.

He hits the deck with a sickening crunch and a jagged bolt of pain that radiates all the way into the backs of his eyes, up from the arm he landed on. His ears are ringing, the world has tipped over on one side, and it takes him too long to realize that he's on the floor. 

It would be so lovely just to lie there, blood pooling under his face where the decking has split his cheek, but the sounds of shouting are all around him. Fire gathers on the edge of his vision, coalesced around the hands of the mage as he turns toward the struggling riggers, and he does the only thing that he can think of.

Which is to tackle him. Because of course it is.

He barrels full lopsided force at the caster and they go down in a heap of flailing limbs and multilingual curses. He smashes the elbow of his deadened arm against the deck and discovers that it has not indeed gone completely numb. Turns out it hurts, a lot, and some kind of strangled animal noise manages to escape his throat before he’s able to get himself up off the floor and a proper weapon into his hand.

He’s not even going to try to use his right arm, certain that will only result in embarrassment and his probable death, drawing his rapier with his left and trying to ignore how strange it feels to only have one weapon in hand. Better one than none though, and he lunges forward to strike a killing blow as the other man rises - only to slide his blade into thin air that wavers like a heat distortion as the mage blinks out of existence.

_ What the shitty fu- _

“Behind you!” he hears Rix shout from somewhere to his left, and the fact that he’s overbalanced and already stumbling forward is the only thing that saves him from having an unnecessary hole through his liver. The blade shears through his shirt, leaving a thin scratch behind, and he whirls around to face the figure in dark leathers that he saw come through with the mage. 

Fantastic. This is going well. Two short swords versus a rapier, a dead arm and his fucking good looks. Taliesin at least still has his two front teeth, which the unnamed pirate does not, so they’re almost evenly matched. At least Taliesin hopes so, though he rather has his doubts.

It’s not amazing. In fact, it’s all he can do not to get skewered like a boar on a spear. The man - Tattoo Face, as Taliesin thinks of him affectionately - is clearly not new at this. He’s been trained, maybe the same way Taliesin has been trained, and on a good day he might be a match. Might.

And today is not a good day.

He lands on the deck, heavily on one knee as the other is kicked out from under him, and where in the flying fuck is Rix as the literal shadow of doom looms over him? He realizes that he can’t actually hear the rest of the battle over the ringing in his head, and when a heavy boot comes down on the blade of his rapier and traps it and his good hand against the planks, he turns his head up to watch his own death approaching.

It is, he thinks, quite beautiful and quite stupid.

A blur of movement past his face, a fleeting shadow, and the blade ricochets off an upturned shield hard enough that he can feel the reverberation in the deck under his knees. The pressure crushing his hand loosens abruptly and he scrambles back, sliding out of the way of the fast moving man-shaped wall that imposes itself between Tattoo Face and himself.

It takes him a full three seconds to realize that it’s Cort.

It both makes sense and doesn’t. The giant fucking shield should have tipped him off, much larger than anything they keep in the arms stores; Cort won’t let go of that for anything, and why should he, it lets him crush people and knock them unconscious when they apparently drag their feet.

He’s not bitter.

Cort shoots him a glance over one shoulder, ostensibly to make sure that he’s still alive, and it reminds him that he’s also not being very helpful. His left hand smarts, half the skin off his knuckles gone where his fingers were mashed into the deck, but he can still hold a sword with it, if only enough to make himself a nuisance.

They used to do this, he and Cort, fighting as a team squared off against the other boys in the training yard. They were good at it too, but compared to this it was all just fun, and the memory is inappropriately dear for how stupidly dangerous the situation is.

He slides forward on his knees, angling under the left side of Cort’s shield from below, and jams the point of his rapier straight through Tattoo Face’s thigh, the razor tip sliding between studs in his leather armor. One of the short swords curves over his head, off-target, close enough that he can feel the air it displaces against his face.

Still, he’ll take it. Especially since he’d been aiming to wound him in the gut.

Cort slams forward with his shield, forcing the pirate backward off Taliesin’s blade, and a second later it’s all over. Blood sprays the deck, followed by a dull wet thud as Tattoo Face’s tattooed face stares up at him cockeyed from over a grimacing mouth and a gash of ragged flesh where his throat used to be.

He bleeds out staring Taliesin right in the eye, and he can’t even care because he is  _ exhausted _ . The brightness of the sun is going gray all around the edges and he’s flat on his back before he even realizes, his view of the clear blue sky narrowing down to a pinprick, obscured by a tall shadow.

“You are such a  _ fool,”  _ he hears Cort say, right before he passes out.


	18. 22 (Part 3) Mildly NSFW

Jeffers setting his shoulder is possibly the most horrifically painful thing he’s ever experienced. Taliesin goes very quickly from  _ everything hurts and I’m dying _ to  _ everything really really really hurts _ and wishing he actually  _ would _ die. Or at least pass out. 

But he didn’t die. That’s how Jeffers congratulates him, right before jamming a bottle of foul tasting greenish-gray goop down his throat. So there’s that.

Probably for the best. Everything feels sluggish and muted, his body moving in stops and stutters like he’s being piloted by someone else, merely a passenger in his own skin. That’s sort of okay too; he’d rather not feel anything right now anyway.

They’re finishing up when the door slams open and Cort sweeps into the room like a sudden lick of flame from a bank of smouldering coals. Taliesin wasn’t even aware a door  _ could _ slam open; doubtless the wood is just beside itself trying to get out of Cort’s path before it's shattered off its hinges into flotsam and kindling by the power of his presence alone.

Cort is  _ furious  _ and no one else in the room even seems to react to it. Probably because no one else can tell. It’s all in the eyes, Taliesin thinks. There’s a distance between that thought and his body as he works himself upright from where he slouches against the bulkhead, swinging his feet carefully around to rest on the floor. The draught he’s been given slows everything down, even the stab of pain that lances through his arm as he settles it in the sling.

Stupid. He’s meant to be careful, which he has a hard enough time with on a good day. Today, he has to admit, is not him at his best.

No, that’s not true. Taliesin protecting someone else  _ is _ Taliesin at his best, he just also happened to make a hash of it in the most inconvenient way possible because gravity is a non-negotiable force of nature.

“I’d like to talk to you, please.” For someone who looks like he could commit a murder, Cort is ever so polite about it.

“Okay,” Taliesin says, because Taliesin can’t really think of anything better to say, and glances at Jeffers humming away in the corner folding bandages. “Do you think we could uh- have the room?”

“Hmm? Oh, right you are.” Jeffers, seemingly completely incognizant of Taliesin’s likely impending death, shrugs and whistles his way back out onto the main deck, leaving the two of them in silence.

Cort shuts the door and leans against it. Folds his arms over his chest.

Even more silence.

Cort’s anger is an open hand, either to pat him on the head or curl around his throat and choke the life out of him. Taliesin isn’t  _ afraid _ ; despite the furious swirl of his own thoughts and all his little phobias, he doesn’t think he actually has it in him to ever be afraid of Cort. But he’s nervous; his anxiety and Cort go hand in hand it seems, a sickening riot of something like drunken butterflies in his stomach and a prickling all down his back.

It’s not exactly the same as being cornered, though maybe it should be. If he thinks he’s going anywhere, the sharp silver glint in Cort’s eye lets him know no uncertain terms that he’s mistaken. Unbidden Marv’s voice floats into his mind.  _ Ship’s not that big, you can’t hide from him forever. _

Well fuck you very much, Marv, captain of the good ship  _ obvious _ .

Shit. He’s such an idiot.

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

Oh. So  _ that’s  _ the fight they’re about to have, not - the other thing. The sort of obvious thing, but also the completely unfair thing. It isn’t like Taliesin  _ tries _ to get hurt, it just happens, like rust and the plague, and nevermind that there are distinctly causal things in both of those cases.

“Yes,” he says, because he could either deny it - an obvious lie - and stretch this conversation out twice as long, or he could just kneel and put his neck on the block and wait for the ax to come down and take his head.

That’s dramatic. No one is dying here. Right now, anyway.

“Why?”

Why indeed. Cort is here, real and solid before him, and face to face all his previous rationale seems to melt away, coalescing into a churning miasma of illogic and assumption that threatens to suck him into the floor. Cort doesn’t just fill the space, he consumes it, dominates it, all broad shoulders and long limbs. For fuck’s sake, he’s not even  _ doing  _ anything, just standing there. Looking. At Taliesin. 

“I’m being stupid, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Cort echoes, unwilling yet to absolve him of his foolishness. Taliesin can hardly blame him.

His eyes feel dry, burning like he’s been staring at the sun, and he rubs at them wearily. He’s so tired now and it’s more than just the drink, weight settling heavy across his shoulders. Cort, he thinks, knows when to pick his moments. “Why are you here?”

Cort’s head tilts to one side. There’s just the faintest twitch in his expression, as though his dark brows want to come down into that serious frown Taliesin knows as intimately as he knows his own scars, but it never fully manifests. Cort isn’t usually surreptitious, that’s always been Taliesin’s tack, but here he’s being careful and it fills Taliesin with dread.

“Why do you think?”

“My father-” he starts, and then abruptly cuts himself off when Cort restlessly shifts. It’s a small thing, just the transfer of weight from one foot to the other, but for someone so still, so solidly planted as Cort usually is, it says too much. He’s wrong. Taliesin isn’t sure how exactly, but whatever is happening here, it isn’t what he thinks it is.

He has half a dozen other hypotheses but he can’t seem to make his mouth work around the words that want to come out faster than his tongue can give them shape, mind leaping to every conclusion that presents itself. 

“Maybe you’d better just tell me,” he says quietly, eventually. His stomach clenches, a squirming feeling of discomfort in his midsection at the way the angry light has gone out of Cort’s eyes, replaced with something withdrawn, carefully shuttered. They used to read each other’s thoughts with just a glance, and now- now he just isn’t sure.

“I’m here because of you.”

“I… know. But…” It’s as if Cort has just told him the sky is blue and the ocean is deep; it’s an obvious answer that answers nothing.

Cort just looks at him for a long moment, carefully considering. In a flash he straightens and falls back into the same unshakable stance from his memories, spine straight. He seems even taller, towering over Taliesin where he sits on the edge of the cot, the toe of his boot scuffing into the planks of the floor like an errant pupil caught unprepared by his tutor.

“It was your suggestion that I come to sea. Learn to sail. If you thought I was here to force you home, you needn’t worry.”

There’s more, something about corresponding with Captain Veda, something about ship combat that he recalls vaguely in memory hazy like pipe smoke and lukewarm ale, but he can’t focus on the specifics. Cort isn’t here to drag him back; the relief is a powerful balm, soothing over nerves he’s worried raw. For a blindingly selfish moment, that’s all that matters. Even more than the fact that Cort is pretending he can lie.

“That’s a fine idea,” he remembers to say eventually, when it occurs to him that Cort has ceased to speak. “Of course it is,” he corrects himself. “It’s mine.”

His half-jest earns him half a smile, but it’s fleeting. Something about that pulls straight at the center of his chest, makes him feel hollow, and he finds himself kneading his hand into the blanket beneath him, tangling it around his fingers.

_ Cort’s hair falls like a dark curtain against one side of his throat, trailing against Taliesin’s chest as he hovers over him, arms set to either side of his shoulders as he leans down across the bed. The sheets are warm at his back, cool under his hands where they flatten, palm down against the mattress. His fingers curl, short nails digging into the fabric as Cort rolls his hips forward, pressing hot and slick into Taliesin’s body, all strength and control and blistering pleasure as Taliesin- _

As Taliesin tumbles out of the memory and sits there uselessly, doing nothing.

If Cort registers the shift in his expression, the color in his cheeks or the way his breath catches in his throat, he gives no sign, instead turning as a brisk knock sounds at the door. He steps aside as it swings brusquely open, admitting the captain who blinks against the dimmer light and exhales a stream of sweet smelling tobacco smoke into the little room.

Veda notes Cort first, standing just out of the way of the door. It should be impossible for him to straighten further but somehow he manages it, unfolding his arms and clasping hands behind his back. At ease, but never resting.

It’s  _ respectful _ , and Cort all over. It’s nothing new and yet he still finds himself transfixed, still goggling at it when the captain turns his eyes on him. Feeling the fool he tries to get up too fast and starts to list over to one side, forgetting the dead weight of his arm in the sling. Veda shoots him an unreadable look and reaches out to push him back into a sitting position, hand heavy on Taliesin’s shoulder like he doesn’t trust him not to try the idiotic move again. 

It is idiotic. He absolutely doesn’t want to see what look Cort has on his face, doesn’t want to see himself be judged, and like a coward he looks at Veda instead.

Veda’s thick eyebrows lift, pipe held aloft in the hand not currently anchoring Taliesin into a seated position. “Going to live then?”

“‘Course,” he mutters, sullen like a scolded child. It warrants a slap upside the head but a blow is not forthcoming. Instead one of Veda’s shaggy brows merely manages to crest new heights on his wizened face like he thinks Taliesin is concussed.

Taliesin might be concussed. He doesn’t really have any other explanation for what feels so perilously wrong with him. None, at least, that he wants to think too deeply about while trapped in here. Cort’s presence is overwhelming and with Veda staring down at him like he knows far more than Taliesin has ever let slip, the small room feels positively claustrophobic.

“I see you two have finally spoken.”

“Sir,” Cort answers for them both, the word somehow affirmative. 

“Good,” is all Veda says, as though the single syllable is enough to relay their entire awkward stutter of a conversation. The old man always understands more than he lets on, though if he and Cort have made themselves more than passing acquaintances in the last two years, he is afraid to imagine how much that could be.

It’s history anyway, he reminds himself, and tries to swallow down the sudden bitter taste in his mouth, lips tight around a weary sigh.

“Light duty until the sling comes off,” the captain orders, ignoring the way Taliesin’s eyelids flutter, vainly struggling not to roll his eyes. There is nothing that makes him feel more useless than an injury, even one superficial enough to heal on its own just given time. He already feels like a crippled bird flopping around in a nest too small to hold it. Even blurry from whatever was in that foul concoction Jeffers made him drink, all he wants to do is  _ climb something _ .

“You can help Mr. Raghnall get acclimated to the ship,” he adds, and the sudden hollow pang in his stomach puts an immediate end to the muted eye rolling. “Though I daresay Salsk will have work for you. Mr. Raghnall, if you’d be so kind as to join me for dinner, I’m interested to hear your impressions of your first battle at sea.”

“It would be my pleasure, sir,” Cort accepts, as if he would do otherwise. Taliesin is carefully not looking at him, more desperate than he realized to convince himself that Cort doesn’t care one way or the other that he’s stuck with Taliesin playing tour guide for a few days. He would bet Cort hardly needs it; if he hasn’t been studying up in preparation for… whatever it is that he’s doing here, Taliesin will eat his shirt.

All the same. Him. And Cort. Talking. Catching up. Spending time. Being in close proximity. It makes that serpent in his stomach twist again, coiling over itself with worry and something not worry at all, all the more concerning.

It’s still gnawing at him all through dinner. Rix is his right-handed shadow, hovering nearby with big worried eyes, trying to help Taliesin manage without the use of his arm and mostly just getting in the way. It makes him feel even more claustrophobic than before, but the boy’s expression looks so rendingly guilty he manages to bite his tongue and offer up a grim smile that seems to pass as thanks.

By the time he’s able to escape topside he’s desperate for air, and he stands for a long time at the stern of the ship, looking out across the water, churning in their wake beneath the moon. He prefers to be higher up, to look ahead rather than behind, but for now this is the best view the  _ Star Shark _ has to offer. Somehow, too, he is blessedly alone. Alone enough to put his head in his hands - fuck,  _ hand  _ \- and try to decipher the reason behind the tightness that still constricts his chest.

He’s dying, he decides in short order. Dying, and stupidly, undeniably, unmistakably still in love.

Okay. Fine. He already knew that. 

What he hadn’t known was just how  _ angry  _ it makes him. Underneath the nausea, the anxiety, the want and the slow humming pain in his arm that none of those things manage to completely dull, he is completely fucking furious.


	19. 22 (Part 4)

The next day starts out exactly as he imagines it will. The weather is clear, the sun is shining, there’s a cool breeze left over from the storm front, and Taliesin gets stuck in his hammock while trying to climb out of it with only one arm.

It is exactly a thousand percent perfect.

He finds Cort waiting for him on the way to the mess and he’s already sweaty and uncombed and disheveled, in a blisteringly foul mood that nothing seems to touch. It feels  _ wrong _ , just like the sling on his arm feels wrong, everything off balance.

Cort weathers it in silence, the way a rock on the shoreline weathers the rage of the waves. It’ll take more strength than Taliesin has at this point to wear him down, so caught up in the eddies of his own internal tirades that he can’t even focus his displeasure, scattering it thin and wide and completely ineffectual.

The second day is not better.

By the third he’s ready to climb a wall with his teeth and fingernails, restless and unhappy in a way that he hasn’t been since he was sixteen years old walking circles around the garden in a loop that never seemed to end. Cort is a steady shadow at his side, hands folded quietly behind his back.

They talk, a bit. About safe things. The ship. The weather. The sea. The crew. Never about home, about them, about anything that really matters and it’s worse than silence.

A week into it and Marv corners him in the back of the mess after everyone else has trickled away and bangs his head off the table. The sling has  _ just  _ come off and all Taliesin needs is another injury to keep his wings clipped. He kicks Marv in the shin like a child, and receives a merciless pinch to the side that will leave two oval shaped bruises for days.

“Stop being an asshole!” Marv snarls, rubbing his shin, as though that’s the worst of the insult. 

Taliesin clutches his forehead, a small welt forming where his head hit his empty plate. “I’m not the one who assaulted a friend with flatware!”

“Well you’re slow!” Marv shoots back, and slides his legs out of the way quicker than Taliesin can swing around and kick him again. “And you are being  _ so _ stupid. It’s actually painful to watch.”

“Then don’t look at me!”

“I can’t help it!” Marv shouts, and throws a napkin in his face. Taliesin brushes it away, scowling, and flings it back. It misses and flutters pathetically to the table, crumpled up like the corpse of a bird after a doomed encounter with a windowpane. Just perfect, really.

Marv is still yelling. “-around the place like you have an oar up your asshole, and you have been a dickhead to everyone and  _ I am sick of your shit _ young man!”

“You’re not my real dad.”

“Cute, moron. What is  _ wrong  _ with you? If you don’t stop with this bullshit, you are gonna drive that man straight back to whatever backwater shithole you both came from and then what? Think you’ll be real fuckin’ happy with yourself after that?” Marv rolls his eyes. “Dumbass.”

“You don’t know,” he starts, and the words are already starting to fall apart. “You don’t know that I won’t be-”

Marv is looking at him with a disgusting look of sympathetic understanding and it makes him want to bang his head on the table again.

“Stop it.”

“You poor dumb thing.”

“I said stop it, Marv. Prick,” Taliesin mutters under his breath, hunching forward as though he’ll pull into himself like a turtle tucking into his shell. He’s far too lanky for that sort of thing and it just feels awkward.

Marv sits back down, clearly believing his shins no longer at risk. “What's got you so fucked off at him anyway? He say something?”

“No.”

“Do something?”

“No.”

“Treat you bad?”

“ _ No _ . Damn it Marv. It's just- not simple.”

“Well then make it simple. If he’s done fuck all to deserve the bullshit you're flinging in his face, then what is your fucking problem?”

“It's just - it's not  _ fair _ ,” he finally manages, well aware he sounds like a petulant child in need of a nap. “He just shows up after two years _ , _ like it's nothing.  _ Here _ , on the fucking ship! I thought I might not ever see him again, and suddenly I'm supposed to- supposed to- I don't know what I'm supposed to do!”

“Don't you love him anymore?”

At that Taliesin sighs, drops his head into his hands. “Loving him has never been the problem. There's just no future in it. He wants - things - that i can't-”

“He wants  _ you _ , stupid.” It's almost not an insult. Almost. “And if he still wants all that crap with the wedding and the babies and the stuffy titles and what for, go  _ change his mind _ .”

“Do you think that's even-?”

“Well fuck all is going to happen if you just sit here on your ass whining about it kid, why don't you just go  _ try _ ?”


	20. 22 (Part 5) NSFW

One look at Cort and all his careful coaching goes straight to shit. He’s not even _doing_ anything, just standing next to the little bed in the corner like he’s trying to give Taliesin space in the cramped quarters, hands carefully at his sides. It’s all he can do not to slam the goddamn door.

The silence is accusatory and awkward, almost like it’s embarrassed for him.

“Please,” Cort sighs, just a weary little whisper of a thing. “Come in. Make yourself at home.” But he’s already in, isn’t he? Because he does that, just trips and falls into places where he has no business being.

“You're... looking well.”

“I've been better,” Taliesin snaps, unable to help himself. Cort doesn't flinch but there's an absence of movement that feels very much like the same thing. He can almost see the kid gloves as they're pulled on, one finger at a time, and it makes him furious all over again.

“Is your arm-"

 _“No_ , it's _fine_ , and I don't need your fucking concern. I didn't need your help in the first place.”

“That's not what it looked like.”

“And you would know, wouldn't you?” The words are blistering, they hiss and steam coming out of his mouth. “Saint Raghnall, always doing what he should.”

“Did you barge in here to talk, or just to shout at me.” It doesn’t sound much like a question, like he just assumes Taliesin will start in again. Frankly it’s offensive, even though it’s exactly what he’s done.

“Fine, I’ll go.”

“Wait.” Cort moves after him as he turns to storm away, like he’ll put hands on him, make him stop. It sends a sickening thrill through his stomach and upward, tingling all along the backs of his arms. “Don’t.”

He’s playing with fire, striking matches in the dark and watching them burn down until the flames sear his fingertips. He should really know better, and even then-

“Alright.”

The silence is tense, tight like lips around a whimper, and it drags on forever.

Cort sighs.

“I don’t want to fight with you anymore, Taliesin. It’s exhausting, and I am _tired_.” He looks it, eyes falling closed as he lifts a hand to rub across his brow. “Why are you so angry at me?”

His voice is quiet, those blue, blue eyes searching for an answer in his face, and Taliesin can almost believe he's hurt him. Guilt and regret and a desperate pointless neediness sink their hooks into him, tangling in the frustrated knot of his heart and threatening to pull him apart.

It makes him want to scream.

“Gods- _fuck_ , why are you _like_ this? Why do you _do_ this?”

“Do what?”

 _“This,”_ he rants, flinging his arms out in an empty gesture, Cort’s aghast expression adding fuel to the fitful fire. “This shit that you do every fucking time, when you could just - why are you always trying to _save_ me?”

“Because I think you're worth it!”

Cort _shouts_ . Cort _never_ shouts and it shuts him up immediately, mouth closing with a snap.

Cort looks immediately chastened, retreating without backing away an inch, an expression perilously close to helplessness, to _defeat_ , etched on his face. “Even if you don't think so.”

He looks so worn and Taliesin is immediately sick with guilt. He's been nothing but spite and vitriol for days and Cort's just taken it at every turn; Taliesin can't begin to imagine what that's cost him.

“I don't need you to rescue me,” he says, more out of obstinance than because he really thinks that's true, and the words come out pitifully soft.

“So you've made very clear.”

He doesn't think he has. Or at least- now he's not entirely sure what it was that he's been trying to convey all this time, flailing around with tooth and claw like a cat on its back.

“I don't understand what you want from me.”

“I don't want anything from you, Taliesin.” The frustrated edge in his voice is back, sliding like a knife beneath his ribs. “I just want _you_.”

“You fucking had me.”

Cort’s eyes flash wide, like he’s being unreasonable. “ _You_ left _me_ , Taliesin.”

“I never fucking did,” Taliesin immediately spits back, the words out of his mouth in a flash before he can think better of them or even decipher what they mean. “Never.”

Gods, what is he doing? Maybe he _is_ being unreasonable; he can see the flash of uneasiness on Cort’s face, plain as daylight on the water.

“Anyway,” he adds lamely, much quieter now. “It isn’t like you asked me to stay.”

“Would you if I had?”

“I don’t know.” The breath he takes shivers on the way in, and he raises shaking hands to claw through his hair. “No, because of - my father. My family. My _duty_.” Bitter, stupid word; it feels like acid on his tongue. “But yes, too, maybe, because- because it’s you, and I’ve always-”

He’s treading perilously close to the edge here, without even a safety net of pretty lies to break his fall. “I just wanted- just wanted to be _free_ , to stay _gone_ , and there you were, and you were _perfect_ . You _are_ perfect, you fucking- fuck. I don’t know how I survived you the first time.”

He isn’t sure he can do it again, that if he starts down this road and it ends in a cliff that he won’t just pitch himself over.

And still, he says it, because somebody has to. “But I do still fucking love you.”

In a flash Cort has him up against the door.

These things are always happening to him, him and doors and Cort. There must be a metaphor lurking there somewhere, but honestly he’s not giving it a lot of thought because Cort is kissing him and he thinks he’s going to die.

The door shudders on its frame behind him as Cort presses them into it, hip to hip and chest to chest, and they’re both hard, breathing heavy, clawing gracelessly at each other in a cacophony of lips and teeth and too many clothes. He wants this so badly, wants this every moment of every day, Cort’s hands curled around his hip, the back of his neck, needlessly demanding things that Taliesin would throw at his feet without being asked. Cort is real and solid and _there_ and it doesn’t make any sense at all, present bleeding into past and two years melting away into nothing like ice in the sun.

It doesn’t feel wrong, but it doesn’t really feel right either. He manages to breathe Cort’s name into the heavy air between them, or at least he thinks he does, a slow tremor traveling from toes to fingertips as Cort pins his wrists almost too hard over his head. He’s strong enough to drag the whole world off its axis and Taliesin clenches his fists and tries to hold on to perspective like its a physical thing, a rope in his grasp to keep him from tumbling into an abyss.

Cort kisses like he wants to eat him alive, pull him to pieces, devour him, and there’s a part of him that thinks that wouldn't be so bad a thing. Cort’s knee presses forward between his legs, Taliesin’s cock against the top of his thigh, and he just wants to writhe with it, the disorienting promise of pleasure that has him straining against his breeches. That Cort could have him coming in his pants like an overeager teenager is just humiliating really, but also completely true and he hates himself for that.

Just a little. Not a lot. It’s still Cort, whom he would do anything for, give anything for, give anything...

That part is sobering; he’s felt this way before. He still remembers his mumbled excuse for a love confession wrapped up in the damp sheets of his bed, and-

Well he doesn’t regret it, and of course he still means it, but if Cort had asked him to stay he thinks he would have.

Instead Cort let him go, and away he went, and he’s never turned around no matter how many times he let himself look back over his shoulder. What does it mean, what does it _mean -_ he’s not smart enough to know and suddenly the twelve ton press of his own desire is smothering and he has to get out or it’ll crush him, drag him down like a weight around one ankle into places where dark things hide with their bright, sharp teeth.

“Wait, _wait-_ ” he manages, and again when Cort doesn’t stop, bucking his body forward and wrenching both arms out of his grasp. His wrists ache, the backs of his hands burning where they rasp against rough wood, but they break apart as Cort stumbles back. Taliesin presses himself into the door, clutching the frame as though it will hold him up, heart so loud in his ears it makes his whole skull pound.  What is he _doing?_ What is he - _mistakes, mistakes, mistakes -_ but he-

“We can’t.” He doesn’t realize he’s even spoken out loud until he sees Cort freeze in place, his entire body seeming unnaturally still against the way his eyes desperately search Taliesin’s face. He looks undone, shirt pulled askew, one lock of dark hair falling forward down the side of his face where it’s escaped the neat ponytail at the nape of his neck. For a moment his mouth is soft in shock and Taliesin can’t help the tightness low in his belly at the way he looks kissed, fucked, messy in a way that Cort never is and Taliesin can’t help but always be, and -

Cort’s jaw tightens, lips forming a thin, unhappy line. He straightens slowly, drawing back into himself like the ocean at low tide, and suddenly Taliesin is desperate to stop him, starting forward as though he’d capture the whole of the sea in a bucket. He hasn’t even managed to say everything he’d meant to say, just the most damning part (of course) because he’s an idiot _(of course)_ and its a good thing he’s clinging onto the door like a limpet because it means Cort can’t leave and he may have a chance to actually fix this.

“I don’t mean-” _Good start Taliesin, moron._ He wets his lips, starts again. “I mean we can’t… here. On the ship. We shouldn’t.”

Fuck. Cort is looking at him warily, his face carefully blank as though he thinks Taliesin is a glass balanced on the edge of a table that might fall and shatter all over him at the slightest vibration. It’s not an unfair assessment.

“There are- rules,” he tries to explain, sounding stupider and stupider. “The captain, and the men, it’s-” Why isn’t this working? He’s usually so good at this, this _speaking_ thing, with words coming out of his mouth in an order that actually makes sense. He wants to put his head in his hands, dig his fingers into his eyes, drag his nails down his own face and fling himself dramatically into the sea to burn to death in a fit of pique, open wounds and salt, and instead he just-

“I’m good here,” he finally manages to say, the words bubbling up out of some unreachable part of him. It marionettes his limbs, makes him gesture around them. “I’m good at _this_ , this life, I- I thought I would hate it and sometimes I do, but I’m so _good_ here. I’m doing something with myself and sometimes I make a difference, and - I’m not ready to give this up.” _Please don’t ask me to give this up._

It’s a million years before Cort blinks, a million more before he moves. It’s so slow but the results are stunning, like blades of grass forcing their way up between cobblestones toward the sun, bringing all the raw power of the earth with them. It’s an overwhelming thing, how this feeling could just grow and grow and grow until nothing civilized is left.

Cort relaxes the rigid set of his shoulders, shakes his head. “You don’t have to choose.”

That could mean too many things. He can’t even trust himself to start to think of something to say in return, too much welling inside him threatening to spill out onto the floor like a flood out of the overturned glass he perpetually is.

Cort sees it, because he sees everything. He steps closer, one foot at a time, until they’re close enough to touch, the distance dissolving between them. Part of Taliesin wants Cort to kiss him again, to drive the last nail into the coffin of his fragile defense. Who is he to choose anything anyway, when what he’s being offered is so much more than he has ever deserved?

He doesn’t, though. Cort’s hands stay carefully at his sides, the half-clench of his fingers the only thing to betray the uncertainty he must feel, and it’s so much easier to look at his hands than to look into his face. His eyes feel hot, scratchy and dry, and they drop to the floor between the toes of their boots, wondering if he’s just inadvertently cost himself something he’s always wanted.

Eventually Cort sighs. “I didn’t come here to take you away, or to take something from you. I came because-” He stops and Taliesin _has_ to look at him, wary and skittish like a stray dog hopeful for scraps but expecting the boot. “I missed you,” Cort says, in the simple way Cort says everything. Like it’s something he’s thought about for a long time, something that is honest and true and simple even when it feels like nothing could be more complicated. “I’ve missed you every moment since you left.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He shouldn’t ask this. “You never said.”

“You never wrote.”

“I- I’m sorry. I tried.”

Cort just nods, because Cort knows him, and anyway Taliesin thinks it’s already too easy to imagine what really happened there anyhow with the way he keeps losing all of his words like the wind has stolen them out of his mouth. He swallows hard against the lump rapidly rising in his throat, flicks his eyes away.

“I wouldn’t have asked- I didn’t think this was possible. I don’t know how you’ve done it.”

At that Cort just smiles, the slow curve of lips that shakes Taliesin’s heart out of his chest and deposits it directly on his sleeve.

“I wasn’t sure if I could manage it either. That’s why I didn’t say. I didn’t want to promise you something that I couldn’t deliver, and after the way I treated you all that summer I didn’t think it would be fair. I should have said something, I see that now.”

His smile leaves so quickly, and Taliesin so desperately wants it back. “Maybe not. You know better than I do about these things.”

“You shouldn’t be so quick to trust my judgement. I’ve never been entirely reasonable when it comes to you.”

It's a trap and he can’t help but fall into it face first, his eyes flicking of their own accord up to where they’re immediately ensnared in Cort’s gaze. His eyes are blue and earnest and he almost doesn’t care anymore about all the things he’s just said, because he’s still so in love and Cort is still so careful, and Taliesin isn’t the kind of person who deserves to be handled gently.

Is this what love is supposed to feel like, then? He doesn't know. “You are quite insane, do you know that?” he asks instead.

Cort shrugs, unconcerned. “Maybe a bit. It's felt like it, sometimes. I just hate the idea of you without me.”

 _Oh_. He doesn't know how to respond to that and he isn't sure he trusts himself to try. The confusing riot of his emotions is already too close to the surface, clenching like a fist around his throat, and if he dissolves into tears the way he thinks he might, he'll never be able to live with himself.

“I guess I don't have to ask if you've thought about this,” he does manage eventually, but somehow it's the right thing to say because the slow smile makes its reappearance. It's like the sun lifting over the horizon after a long darkness, warm and blinding and full of hope.

Cort doesn't answer him because he doesn't have to, and instead reaches out to touch Taliesin’s face, splaying his fingers across his jaw.

He shudders. He can't help it, the raw wanting is still too strong and he thinks he'll burn with it into ash. Cort's eyes darken immediately, storms in the blue, but he doesn't move at all except to smooth his calloused thumb along Taliesin’s cheek.

“We'll do this however you want.”

“Really?” The word is out before he can think better of it, and it sounds so disbelieving it's almost offensive. “I don't mean-" But he does, and he just shuts his mouth before he can try to explain it away because he already knows how foolish it will sound. What he has with Cort, this undefinable thing, has never felt like a choice; it feels inevitable.

“You always have a choice, Taliesin. You don’t belong to me.”

That makes him laugh, just a little. It shouldn’t, but it does. No matter how many options he has, a whole world to select from at his fingertips, Cort is the only one he’d ever choose.

“I don’t belong to anyone else.”


	21. 22 (Part 6) NSFW

They are in yet another portside tavern, just another dingy little thing on the dockside. Cort’s mouth is still stained, knuckles bloodied, from the brawl that was their introduction to the room. Nothing they'd done, of course, but Taliesin has always enjoyed Cort after a good fight, and Cort - well, even stalwart, sensible Cort never takes kindly to being hit with a chair.

“You're drunk.”

“I don't know how you could possibly have come to that conclusion.”

Their table is scattered with empty tankards and a bottle with less than an inch if something amber at the bottom, but that's not what Cort is looking at. He's looking straight at Taliesin and his blue eyes are honey in the yellow light.

His gaze drifts lazily downward and Taliesin’s fingers tighten around his cup, suddenly breathless. He swallows hard and Cort grins, missing nothing.

Shit, he really  _ is  _ drunk. He can feel his cheeks start to flush, heat rising to his face, and Cort laughs outright. It makes him blush to full red and he can’t even hide it, reaching up to scratch the back of his neck, nose wrinkled in chagrin.

“You’re making fun of me.”

“You’re easy to make fun of.”

It’s just banter, but even the harmless teasing makes his stomach twist a little, a shiver of something uncomfortably like anxiousness up his spine. He doesn’t have any right to it, he knows that - he’s been a god awful terror since Cort showed up on the ship nearly a month ago, tearing through the place like a mirror shattering in slow motion.

Not one of his proudest moments, and he has just  _ so  _ many of those to brag about anyway.

But here they are, in some shitty tavern that he’s already forgotten the name of, because none of the rest of the crew wanted to venture down this far. It’s just the two of them. Just him and Cort and a bunch of booze and a lot of sexual tension.

If that’s even what this is. He isn’t sure. Part of him is tempted to call it  _ romantic  _ tension because honestly it’s all a bit of a fairytale at this point, but the thought of it makes him want to laugh and then walk into the sea. It’s not like he’s a liar - at least, he doesn’t  _ only  _ lie - but lately his ability to hide what he’s thinking is at an all time low and he feels raw with it, all his nerves exposed. Cort hasn’t pushed, but only because that’s not the way Cort does things, and he is perfectly capable of tying himself in a knot without help from anyone else.

Like right now. Perfect example.

Gods, and it’d been going well too.  He’s definitely had too much to drink if all of a sudden he’s all maudlin and broody, with the object of his near obsession right there in front of him, probably watching every emotion and stray thought he has play out across his face.

“Are you alright?” Cort asks, and he perfectly well knows the answer is  _ no.  _ “You look a bit-”  _ Insane. _ “Peaked.”

“Rum,” is all he says, because that explains everything.

Cort’s eyebrows lift thoughtfully, and he reaches across the table to slide Taliesin’s mostly empty glass away. “I think you’re cut off. Tomorrow you’ll be-”

“Do you want to go upstairs?”

Cort’s hand freezes on the edge of the glass. It’s just a small stutter of surprise and he recovers well, but Taliesin still sees it and congratulates himself. 

“Are you tired?”

“No.”

“Ah.”

So he’s doing this, then. 

“Is that all you’re going to say to me, Raghnall?” he demands breezily, and shoves back in his chair to stand. It’s his good luck that he does not immediately fall over, managing to parlay the sudden sway of the room into a dramatic turn and walk away, picking a path through the crowded tavern floor.

He doesn’t look to see if Cort is following him, but he can feel eyes on his back all the way up the stairs. 

The upper portion of the tavern is poorly lit and smells of salt and stale ale. The floors creak beneath their boots with age and wear, the wood worn smooth by the passage of many feet and the indulgent neglect of an innkeeper who only fixes things when they’re well and truly broken.

This isn’t, he thinks, the nicest place for a reunion. Gods, is that what he’s really calling it now? It’s just in the privacy of his own head, but it sounds so-

Familial.

He shudders. The liquor from earlier is twisting around in his stomach; maybe he’s had more to drink than he realizes, but his senses feel overly sharp, catching on things at random in the shadows. The way the lantern-light flickers off the walls. The way the number on their door is hung at a lopsided angle. The way he can still scent blood on Cort, salty and dangerous and more appealing than it has any right to be.

Fuck, he is such a  _ ruin _ .

Cort doesn’t look at him as he lets them in, the key sticking slightly in the lock. That age old relationship between them and doors immediately flits into his mind and he finds himself holding his breath as he steps through, but Cort seems almost distracted, crossing over to the wash basin to splash water on his face.

It gives him a moment to look around the room, quietly relieved that it isn’t half as disgusting as some of the places he’s woken up in. It’s spare but neat and as clean as one can reasonably expect for the dockyard. If he was smarter he would have taken them into the city, but he hadn’t wanted to seem like he was trying. Because he’s not smart at all.

He shuts the door behind them, locks it, rocks back on his heels. Now that they’re here he isn’t entirely sure what he ought to do. It all feels  _ important _ , like it  _ matters _ , and he’s much better at being a flippant, thoughtless asshole than he is at being careful and sincere. That’s what he has Cort for.

The idea that he has Cort again, or even at all, feels strange.

Cort turns back to him, face dried on the sleeve of his shirt. Even in the dim light Taliesin can see the beginnings of a bruise blossoming on his cheekbone above a faint shadow of stubble. It makes him look rougher than he’s used to seeing him, less pristine, and for no reason at all he wants to press his fingers all around the edges of that darkening spot.

“Alright then?” Cort asks, and Taliesin snaps back into himself all in a rush, no idea how long he’s been standing there.

“Of course.”  _ Liar _ . “...Does that hurt?”

Cort just shrugs, too unconcerned to bother lifting both shoulders. Right. Taliesin isn’t sure what to say, and Cort looks tight lipped and wary like something has changed between them on the short walk up the stairs.

“Is everything-” he starts, at the same time that Cort sighs and says  _ “Taliesin” _ and then suddenly he knows exactly what is going on. For fuck’s sake, he’s  _ nervous.  _ Unflappable Cort Raghnall is nervous. He doesn’t even know what to think.

He’s still hovering near the door as if he means to flee; he should sit down, make things a bit less… whatever they are. The only place to sit though is the bed, which he thinks better of almost immediately, a bit too late once his ass is planted in the sheets. Taliesin draws his feet up to sit cross legged, heedless of his boots, and attempts to look less like he expects to be tumbled over at any second.

“Are you sure you want to do this? It’s not like we have to.”

Cort laughs, just a little huff of a thing. “Of course I do. It's just been a while.”

Taliesin blinks. “Have you not-" 

He almost can't bear asking and Cort just looks at him, long and even. 

_ “Really? _ Not  _ once?” _

“Is that so hard to believe?”

It's been two years, and all this time Taliesin has been- 

He sighs, rubs a hand over his brow; the skin feels numb beneath his hand. “It’s you, so no. I just-" It's so hard to admit, even though he knows there isn't any reason he shouldn't have. He's done nothing wrong, but it still feels like an admission of guilt.

“I’ve been with other people.” He doesn't mean it to come out so blunt, but there it is anyway.

“Many?”

“It's me.”

Cort actually laughs at that, something about the arid tone of Taliesin’s voice amusing. It shouldn't be. He is such a whore sometimes, falling into bed after bed, always chasing something he can't define. He never finds it either, just keeps searching and searching, like a trick compass that only points the wrong way. It’s mad.

“Alright then.”

“That's it?”

“It's you.”

“Oh.” That is  _ devastating _ . 

Cort crosses over to sit next to him on the bed. The mattress dips beneath his weight and it's a sensation comfortable enough to make Taliesin want to cry. That would be terrible, and he studiously keeps his eyes on the floor as though he finds the knotted wood hypnotically interesting. 

Cort gently rocks into Taliesin’s shoulder, makes him sway. “That isn't what i meant. You haven't done anything you shouldn’t.”

“Still, maybe it should have been different.”

“I don't know about that. I’m sure you have all manner of new things to show me.”

It’s said lightly enough to be provocative, Cort grinning. Taliesin snorts, pulled unwillingly out of his mood. “What, like my extra arm?”

“Have you got one? I haven’t seen-” and against all that is holy and all of his expectation, upstanding, serious Cort Raghnall grabs his fucking side and almost knocks him off the bed because it  _ tickles _ .

“Stop that you ass!” he hisses and flails, tangled up in the way he’s sitting. Of course Cort doesn’t, and Taliesin ends up tipping over like a rickety chair, defending himself as poorly as when they were children, roughhousing beneath his mother’s tree.

Cort is laughing, halfway flattening him before Taliesin gets him to stop. “I always thought that was adorable.”

“My duress under torture?” He’s laughing too, still a bit breathless, but his voice comes out with familiar sarcasm. “You monster.”

Cort just grins down at him, and the expression is so boldly fond that it makes his stomach lurch. He realizes suddenly that he’s got both of Cort’s hands in his - ostensibly to bend back all his fingers until he stops jamming them into Taliesin’s sides, but with the way Cort is half on top of him it feels suddenly very real, and very like something else. He thinks Cort can feel it too because the room seems to sway, Cort slowly sliding his fingers out of Taliesin’s loosening grip to prop himself up on the bed.

“I’d like to kiss you,” he says, head tilting to one side like a speculative bird considering whether or not Taliesin is a worm that can be eaten. Not that it makes him feel low, or - maybe it does, drawing to mind the scene in Cort’s cabin from weeks ago where Taliesin, for the first time in his whole life, told him to stop.

“You don’t have to ask. I don’t want you to ask.”

He doesn’t, and leans down to take his mouth. It’s a light, gentle thing, as chaste as their first kiss wasn’t. Both of their eyes are open until Taliesin squeezes his shut, reaching out to grab Cort by the shirt and haul him back down as he starts to lift away.

There is a groan that shatters him, winding down through his body like a physical thing to close tight like a hand around his cock. He’s already hard and he has no idea when that even happened, but its everything he can do to keep himself from rutting against Cort’s thigh as it slides between his legs.

They fit together well, almost of a height. He’s not as fragile as Cort seems to think though - not fragile  _ at all _ , his ego insists - the man always leery of crushing him. There are worse things in the world, he thinks, than being crushed by someone with arms like sculpted marble and more abdominal muscles than nature actually requires for living. Maybe sometimes he just  _ wants  _ to be crushed, but now doesn’t seem like the moment to argue the point. Not when Cort has one hand curled beneath his neck, fingers threading into his hair, mouth all over him like water in a rainstorm.

There was a moment when he thought that this could be very sweet, that this time might be slow and soft and lazy like it sometimes was, like being tired and falling into a familiar bed at the end of the day. This feels nothing like that, and it’s  _ good _ because somehow it’s also  _ right _ .

He doesn’t need a shirt, Taliesin thinks hazily as Cort all but rips his off of him. What are shirts even for? His hands are against Cort’s chest, not enough clearance to give as good as he’s getting, but he doesn’t give a good god damn. He’ll let it happen, this time and the next time and the time after that for as long as Cort wants him, and it doesn’t really matter  _ how _ , just that it  _ is _ . It’s more than he deserves.

Cort gets an arm under his waist and drags him up the bed, slamming him back against the headboard, his mouth on Taliesin’s pulse. It is like it always is, both too much and not enough. His hands find the hem of Cort’s shirt, ruck it up in the back to slide both hands up the hard contour of his spine, digging his short cropped nails in when he feels the press of teeth.

“I missed,” Cort says against his ear. “The way you taste.”

He hears himself make this pitiful little sound in the back of his throat, some desperate, needy little whimper of a thing that drags out into a whine as Cort’s fingers find his hair again and  _ pull _ , dragging his head back. He’s going to have bruises all over, everywhere Cort’s mouth goes, and it fills him with a breathless excitement that fights him for control. He’s taken his cock in hand with thoughts like these, fantastical little stories where he ends up a wreckage, cracked open like a ship against a reef. They’re self-destructive imaginings, seeming in the aftermath only to make him feel completely set adrift.

He feels differently about it now, of course. Maybe there’s a little ancillary scenario where Cort plucks him out of the water, they take up residence on a deserted island filled with flowers and fresh fruit, and fuck the days away in the shade beneath a palm tree, but that is also not something he’s quite prepared to discuss with anyone ever.

He forgoes Cort’s shirt for his belt, sightlessly unbuckling the clasp and easing his trousers open to close his hand around his cock. Cort surges into his grip, as hot and hard as his hands are, another one of those ragged sounds winding tight into the base of Taliesin’s spine. It’s almost surreal, Cort’s body over his, half-straddling him in a shitty inn in some backwater middle of nowhere. His eyes feel too wide like he’s gaping in awe at everything, but something about it does feel wondrous. The cock in his hand throbs when he tightens his grasp, and he can feel Cort shudder when he strokes it, base to tip.

“Don’t,” he says, hands on Taliesin’s wrists to pull them away. “Not if you want me to be of any use to you at all.”

“I don’t care,” Taliesin says, his voice all breathy and strange in the tightness of his throat. The idea of Cort coming apart in his hands is powerful, compelling, and he manages somehow not to give way, lifting his eyes to Cort’s face as his hand strokes more firmly, the other wrapped in the loose waistband of Cort’s pants to keep him from moving away.

It’s not really fair; Cort’s eyes are dark, pupils huge, and he freezes under Taliesin’s gaze like he’s stumbled into a trap, swallowing hard. He can do whatever he wants when he has Cort like this.

“Take your shirt off,” he orders softly and Cort complies, stretching forward even closer as he arches his back, the fabric pulled away. Every muscle in his torso is tight, his shoulders too, muscles standing rigid beneath sun bronzed flesh. He puts a hand out to brace against the headboard, caging Taliesin in, who turns his head to bite down at the softer skin at the bend of his elbow. Cursing, Cort grabs his chin and then squeezes his eyes closed when Taliesin immediately takes his thumb into his mouth, tongue tracing the rough callus on its pad, all but begging Cort to ram it down his throat.

_ “Fuck,” _ Cort says again, unable to keep from looking. His cock approves, throbbing in Taliesin’s grip. It looks painfully hard, precum beading at the tip. He’d take it in his mouth if he thought there was any chance of getting Cort to shift over, but his weight is an anchor draped across Taliesin’s thigh and Taliesin isn’t so invested in the idea that he’ll make him move. And anyway, he’s always liked to watch Cort come undone, smug and satisfied at shaking someone always so unfairly composed.

He doesn’t look it now, brow furrowed in concentration like this is a test he’s desperately trying not to fail, the flimsy headboard creaking in his grip. He slides his fingers from Taliesin’s mouth and settles them on his shoulder, balled up in the remnants of his shirt like he desperately needs something to hold on to as his hips work forward and back, sliding through Taliesin’s slick grasp. Painfully tight little movements, a shudder every time Taliesin twists his closed fist over the head of his cock, jaw clenched down tight against making a sound.

That’s too bad; Taliesin likes to hear him. They’ll work on that, he thinks.

“I love you like this,” he says, his voice breathy and low without him even trying for it. “All wild and undone and at my mercy.”

“Taliesin-” Cort starts, a pleading edge to his voice that Taliesin ignores.

“You thought about me, didn’t you. Alone in your room at night, your hand around your cock.” He tightens his grip to make his point and Cort chokes back a tortured sounding groan, rumbling low in his throat.

_ “Taliesin.” _

“Didn’t you? Wanting  _ me _ to do it to you, just like this.”

“Yes,” Cort hisses, eyes narrowing when he opens them and sees Taliesin grinning up at him like a cat in a creamery. “You bastard, at least let me touch you too.”

“And spoil my view?”

Cort laughs, somehow, and leans forward, bridging the distance between them to kiss Taliesin’s smiling mouth. It’s messy, too hard and with teeth, smacking the back of his head against the headboard. When Cort pulls away for breath he doesn’t withdraw, curling his hand around the back of Taliesin’s neck and pressing them brow to brow. “You are impossible.”

“And  _ you  _ are going to come all over me.”

“Fucking-  _ hell,”  _ Cort curses, clearly expecting neither the words nor their easy delivery, robbed of both rhythm and concentration. It only takes two more strokes to do it, Taliesin laughing even around the discomfort of Cort’s fingers digging into him so hard he thinks his neck will crack.

He’s still smirking ages later when Cort manages to sit upright again, resting back wearily on his heels.

“Fuck.”

“Do tell, Mr. Raghnall.”

Cort shoots him a dirty look, lifting his hands from where they dangle loosely at his sides to push his hair out of his eyes. “That’s not really the way I imagined that going.”

Taliesin snorts and pushes Cort off, sprawling him out on the bed next to him. His chest and stomach are sticky with seed and he frowns down at it absently, shrugging his shoulders carefully to strip off the ruins of his shirt and clean himself up. “Let’s just call it one I owe you. Of many.”

There’s a drawn out moment of silence like a held breath, and Cort rolls over onto his side to watch him. “That upsets you.” As usual, it’s not a question. “That I haven’t been with anyone else.”

“I forgot how hard you are on my clothes.”

“Taliesin.”

“Yes,” he admits, grudgingly, because there’s really no point in denying it. Cort is an insufferable know-it-all, doubly unforgiveable because he doesn’t even have the decency to gloat. 

“Why?”

Why indeed, he thinks, and pitches his soiled shirt off the side of the bed. By all rights he should be pleased; gods know imagining Cort with someone else has made him sick straight into his soul plenty of times. But somehow, the idea that he spent months -  _ years _ \- faithful to someone so distant and removed he might as well be just a figment of Cort’s imagination- Taliesin hadn’t managed to write  _ once _ , for fuck’s sake. This loyalty is not something he would have asked for and it isn’t something he deserves.

Not that he’ll say that, because he already knows the look Cort will give him. The one both disappointed in him and sorry for him in one fell swoop. Taliesin hates that look.

“Because of all the wasted time and energy,” he says finally, giving himself a long moment to think it over. Cort doesn’t rush him, quietly watching Taliesin studiously avoid making eye contact. “Now I don’t know how much of it was because I wanted to, and how much of it was me trying to get over you.”

That last part comes out a little more honest than he meant to allow, and they are both silent for a long while afterwards. 

Cort sighs, the long, slow exhalation shimmying cool over Taliesin’s bare chest. “I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Taliesin answers bluntly, forgetting not to look at him.

“I started it.”

“You say that like I haven’t been a little bit in love with you ever since we were boys.”

Cort blinks at him and he feels his face go flame hot, his gaze ricochetting away immediately, trying to find anywhere else to land but on Cort’s face. What the fuck is wrong with his mouth? At this rate he won’t have any secrets left. Or dignity.

He’s mumbling something incoherent and unintelligible when Cort grabs his wrist and pulls him down onto the bed, hooking an arm over his waist when on instinct he turns away. “I always knew you were special. Even before I knew why.”

That is just-

“Gods,” he sighs, exasperated - mostly at the way his eyes feel dry and hot and it’s suddenly hard to swallow. “Can’t you just kiss me already?”

Cort obliges when Taliesin turns to him, tactful as ever in not mentioning how he isn’t the slightest bit fooled.

It’s easy to get lost kissing Cort though, and before long he’s not doing so in protest but because it feels good, like rain after a long drought. It starts tender and it stays that way, even when eventually they both make it to fully unclothed, boots and pants in an untidy pile at the foot of the bed as Taliesin’s toes curl into the sheets and Cort sprawls across his thighs, Taliesin’s cock in his mouth and his hands in fists in his hair.

“I want you,” he says, shy and stupid, suffused with warmth and foolishness and three week’s worth of longing, close but so far away.

“You have me,” Cort tells him and Taliesin can’t do anything more than clutch at his shoulders like he thinks all of this will fade away. It’s tight and slick and slow and good, and even the little bit of pain is welcome because nothing else feels as right as when they are like this, wrapped in each other’s bodies, moving together like the sea and the sky at the horizon.

“I love you,” he says as Cort spills into him, and doesn’t matter at all that Cort doesn’t say it back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End of Part II


	22. 22 (Part 7)

When he wakes, curled into a pool of sunlight that falls across their little rented bed that first morning, Cort is still there; fast asleep with his head low on Taliesin’s chest and his arms cast out like a net anchored with a hand under Taliesin’s hip, silent and still like a calm, waveless sea.

Taliesin churns beneath him, heart crashing against the inside of his ribs like a storm surge cresting toward an unassailable cliffside. He does so quietly though, taming the glorious maelstrom in his heart into a gentle trickle of fingers through dark hair, soft as raindrops on a window.

He doesn’t know what incomprehensibly good thing he’s accidentally done to deserve this, to which god he owes his thanks for this tender kind of mercy, this thing born of miracles. He shouldn’t have this but he wants it just the same, and it’s enough to make him weep, tears spilling from the corners of his eyes into the hair at his temples, overwrought with emotion that no amount of sated exhaustion can quell.

It’s embarrassing, but it’s not more than he can learn to bear. Cort murmurs to him, lashes dark against his cheek and fingers soft on Taliesin’s side, as though he knows what he needs to hear, even in his sleep.

No man alive ever had luck this good. He won’t forget it.

“Did you sleep at all?” The first thing Cort says to him, leaning into a caressing hand as he stirs awake, his mouth a lopsided line of displeasure when Taliesin shakes his head.

“Bad dreams?” he asks, his voice a low rumble in his throat, and Taliesin lets him go so he can sit up, rubbing sleep from eyes endearingly unfocused. It makes Taliesin want to touch him and he supposes he’s allowed to, reaching to slide his cool fingers over Cort’s shoulder to the nape of his neck. Cort’s skin is always so warm, so alive, that even such a simple thing becomes a kind of beauty that tears at his heart.

“You know it’s too early to look at me like that,” he says, rather nonsensically Taliesin thinks. His eyes pick up the light, bright blue like shallow waters.

“Like what?” he can’t help but ask, fingers curling through a wealth of dark hair.

“Like you think I’m not real.” Cort is entirely too perceptive, even so close to waking. He takes Taliesin’s hand as it goes still in his hair and pulls it to his mouth, a kiss against his wrist, face turned into his palm. “At least give me a moment to collect my wits so I can persuade you otherwise.”

Cort, even with only half his wits about him, is undeniably convincing.

*

Marv is on the dock, pretending to oversee a pair of porters loading crates of supplies, but ostensibly smoking and gossiping with a handful of other sailors. He slides off his barrel when he sees Taliesin and Cort, a massive shit eating grin splitting his weathered face at the way they walk side by side, absent their usual three foot distance.

It makes Taliesin self-conscious, entirely too aware of the proximity like a ship skirting close against the rocks, and start to lean away. Cort shoots him a glance and shifts his weight, rocking his shoulder against Taliesin’s and making him sway. The message is clear, but surprising, and it makes part of his heart effervesce like a kettle boiling over.

“Got yourselves sorted, I see,” Marv commentates. “I do like to see my children happy.”

Taliesin rolls his eyes straight into the back of his skull. “You. Are not. My real dad.”

Marv just snickers and slaps him on the ass, hard enough to make him jump and then rub the spot. “Ow.”

“I don’t know what he sees in you,” Marv says airily, leaning back onto his perch. Cort just snorts at that and shakes his head, lifting a crate onto one of his broad shoulders like it weighs nothing and disappearing up the gangplank. Marv casts an appreciative eye over his back. “I get what you see in him, though.”

_ “Marv.”  _

“Oh don’t start clutching your pearls now kid. Just because you’ve worked through your differences.” Marv stops. “You  _ have _ , haven’t you?”

Taliesin shrugs, one shoulder lifting sheepishly, not entirely sure why he feels so embarrassed. It’s not like it’s a sensitive matter, except, well, it is. “I guess so, yes.”

“Good.” Marv claps him on the shoulder, like the deal is done. “Then you can come out for a drink.”

*

He doesn’t know if it’s because Marv has read them the riot act ahead of time, or because literally everyone saw this coming like a telegraphed punch, but nobody says anything about it. The men have gotten used to Cort, even in his somewhat unorthodox role, and don’t seem to take it amiss that he casually refuses to budge from Taliesin’s side.

Not that Taliesin wants him to go anywhere. It just feels strange, being able to be open about - it. Whatever  _ it  _ is. Their... relationship. The word fills him with a quiet panic, a nauseating twirl like a cyclone of moths spiraling straight into a fire. He’s spent so much time wanting this that he’s forgotten that, if history is to be believed, he is terrible at it.

Granted, he’s not sure that Arissa should count. Whores that he’s seen on the regular also probably shouldn’t be considered. He knows he’s a good friend, but a friend that you hold down against a bed and kiss and curl your fingers inside is a very different sort of friend than he’s ever really been to anyone, and if he fucks this up he will die. Literally. And he will deserve it.

Eventually he calms down, but not before he’s had a little too much to drink. Cort’s arm is solid and warm across the back of his chair, not even really touching him, just there, and Taliesin realizes that no one cares about any of this but him and it’s  _ ridiculous _ . If anyone else in the crew was trying it on for size he wouldn’t give two halves a crap, and obsessing so hard about it is only going to make him crazy.  _ More  _ crazy, anyway. Crazier.

So he stops thinking about it and gets a little bit drunk about it instead, until the anxiety is banished in a languid tangle of loose limbs and easy laughter. At some point Cort’s fingers begin stroking the back of his shoulder through his shirt, a slide of his thumb in a slow circle, and Taliesin feels safe enough to turn to look at him and smile.

*

It’s more good than it isn’t. Their time aboard the ship is always hard, especially right at the end when they’re staring down a few days of leave, itchy with salt and balmy air, in anticipation of what’s to come. They stick to his rule, no fraternization on the ship, though Taliesin is suspicious that it’s only because it’s the one rule he’s ever really dare make.

Cort seems to get some fair mileage out of it as well, casting him long, dark looks when they pass each other in the corridor, eyes lingering on his mouth and fingers as they eat dinner in the mess. Veda has him drill the men in swordplay on quiet days when their patrol yields no new, fresh dangers, and Cort pushes him harder than ever, knocking him down just to have an excuse to offer him a hand back up again. It doesn’t take long for Taliesin to catch on, and all it takes to summon up one of those slow, sultry smiles is a futile attempt at a hard glare.

It runs the gamut between hilariously adorable to absolutely maddening, and if it’s all just to keep him interested, it’s clearly working. Not that Cort need have bothered at all; Taliesin spends enough of his own time replaying past moments in his mind, funny little stupid things that make him laugh, slower, softer things that make his heart ache. Hungry things that prowl after him in the dark, leaving him longing to be touched. It’s all he can do to get Cort off the ship sometimes, and often they don’t make it all the way to an inn before Taliesin is pulling him by the wrist into some rank alley somewhere, like a beast dragging its prey back to its lair to be devoured.

Cort just lets him do it, because Cort is almost as crazy as he is, and because Cort never seems to tell him no.


	23. 23 (Part 1)

He makes it almost six whole months before he screws up. Frankly, it's a miracle he even made it that long.

He's dying, and the only reason he knows he's not dead yet is the fact that everything hurts. His head is pounding, his body aches, mouth tasting like he's been licking up ash out of the fireplace. His stomach squirms like it's full of angry bees, offended at his continued existence like he's poured oil over their nest and lit both it and himself on fire.

Taliesin sits up groaning and immediately regrets it; even his fucking  _ eyelids  _ hurt. That makes sense at least, given the way his eyeballs are made of sand. He starts to rub them and even that is too much; he just presses the heels of his palms into their sockets and wishes for death.

“Cort-" he starts, and his voice sounds like chewed up glass, gravelly and awful, and when there's no answer he drops his hands and realizes he's alone.

And that's not everything. In slow dawning horror he looks down at himself, and he doesn't need a mirror to realize that the damage is total.

He's wearing a dress. A  _ dress _ . It's several sizes too large for him, hanging off his shoulders by straps that don't look like they're made to support the kind of bosom it would require to fill out the bodice, embellished with scratchy lace that has seen better days. He's missing his weapons but also his shirt and with a razor-tipped lightning strike of dread that hits him right in the middle of his idiot forehead, he realizes he has no idea what happened last night.

No, that's not true. He remembers the tavern, remembers the rowdy cacophony of sailors shouting over one another, crude jests and bawdy songs. Remembers Marv and the crew, remembers  _ Cort _ , and none of that explains exactly why he's in his present state of undress - or dress, as it were - alone in the room he's supposed to be sharing with another person. Someone who wouldn't just up and leave him, unless-

Unless.

What the fuck has he done.

He panics, flailing wildly out of the sheets tangled about his legs, and almost makes himself vomit, the room spinning with the frantic movement. When it finally stops he's at least somewhat reassured to find that beneath this getup he's still wearing  _ some  _ of his own clothes, but when he smears a hand over his rancid mouth and it comes away pink, he looks down at his fingers in horror.

He's woken up in someone else's clothes, with lipstick on his face, and Cort isn't here.

What has he done,  _ what has he done? _ He suspects the worst and gods that's just like him isn’t it, faithless, worthless, no better than the two bit whore he probably got this dress off of. How could he be so  _ selfish _ , so  _ foolish _ , so reckless and feckless and just plain  _ stupid  _ enough to have completely lost control?

He tears the thing off himself like its made of stinging nettles, throws it on the floor. Throws himself on the floor shortly thereafter when he tries to get up too fast and his legs won't hold him, going out at the knees and leaving him crumpled against the side of the mattress.

Stupid body - he has to go find Cort, make sure he's okay, and then apologize, fucking  _ profusely _ , beg for forgiveness like his life depends on it. He’s not even being dramatic at this point, that is  _ exactly _ what this feels like, and if Cort never wants to speak to him again, never wants to  _ see  _ him again, it will be more than he deserves because it means that Cort hasn’t just murdered him outright for not being able to keep it in his fucking pants.

He’s had his low points, but this one feels like a plummet face first into the center of the earth.

Like the spoiled child he evidently is, he wants to burst into tears but his eyes won’t cooperate. The moisture fills them with a searing, stinging pain, and he ends up dropping his head against the rickety wooden cabinet at the bedside, curled up into half a ball, too pathetic to get up off the floor. His despair is endless, deep and wide like a sea without borders, and he doesn’t even hear the door open or the footsteps padding towards him.

“Taliesin? What in green hell-”

It’s Cort. Lovely, beautiful, merciful Cort  _ whom he loves more than air and the fucking sun _ , come to rescue him or put him out of his misery.

“Cort,” he says like he’s never said his name out loud before, and there is so much pathetic relief in the sound that it takes half the breath in him out with it. “I thought you’d gone.” Taliesin reaches in his general direction and misgauges the distance, near to toppling over until Cort takes a knee and catches his arm.

“Not permanently, you mad thing. Why are you on the floor?”

“I thought-” he can’t even explain, it’s too insane. He sounds absolutely mental, a blubbering wreck half undressed, clutching both hands into Cort’s loose shirt as if he has any right to touch him at all. “I don’t know what I’ve done but I know that it’s terrible, and you can hate me if you want, I am  _ so sorry _ -”

“Taliesin.”

“-have no idea, I woke up and there’s this  _ dress _ -”

_ “Taliesin.” _

_ “-lipstick everywhere,  _ and-”

“Taliesin!”

That shuts him up, but only because the little shake Cort gives him is enough to make him consider throwing up in his own lap, like what this lovely coffin he's built for himself really needs is another nail in it.

Cort lifts both his hands to frame Taliesin’s face, fingers smoothing down the wild curl of his hair, and it feels so good it makes him miserable. Too miserable to keep from burying himself in it, rubbing his stubbled cheek into the rasping calluses of Cort’s palm even though he shouldn’t and isn’t worthy of a bit of it.

“Why are you being nice to me. Don’t be nice to me.”

He feels more than sees Cort roll his eyes, ignoring the plaintive order. “Why wouldn’t I be nice to you. I’m glad you’re alive.”

“I-” What does that mean?

Cort just shakes his head and slides his fingers up to rub the back of Taliesin’s neck, easing the stress that radiates from the top of his skull to the base of his spine. He arches into it like a cat despite himself and then sighs, unable to form coherent words, as helpless under Cort’s hands as he is in the throes of one of his panics. 

“Gave me a bit of a scare there.” He opens his eyes and Cort smiles. Just a small one, but it looks genuine enough. “Wasn’t sure you’d make it through the night.”

“I’m fine. Did you- you didn’t sit up all night, did you?” He’s finally together enough to notice the chair in the middle of the floor, a glass set next to one of its legs, facing the bed.

“Maybe a bit,” Cort demures, the smile edging toward a smirk, but it barely registers in the midsts of a new flood of fresh guilt. Cort looks tired, shadows beneath his eyes. “Had to make sure you didn’t do something ridiculous, like stop breathing or try to abscond with the bedsheets out the window.”

It must have been  _ so bad  _ if Cort is making jokes. It’s not like he’s never seen Taliesin drunk before, but this is just too much.

“I am so sorry, Cort. You have no reason to believe me, I know that, but I promise, I will never do this shit again. Please don’t-”  _ leave me _ . He drags in a shaky breath, trying to finish. “Be upset with me. I’ll make it up to you, do whatever you want.”

“You really are out of your mind, do you know that?” There isn’t any heat to the words though, just the warmth of Cort’s skin against his face as his hand cups his cheek. “You need some water. Let’s get you off the floor.”

Not that Taliesin has anything to say about that, even if he could actually form proper words. Cort all but bodily hauls him up off the ground, depositing him on the edge of the bed. Taliesin drinks obediently despite the twist in his stomach when he’s handed a glass of water, imagining that he can feel all the dehydrated places in his brain where they slowly start to expand.

Cort is puttering around the room, obnoxiously hale, coming to sit eventually at the end of the bed with a tray in his lap. Plain rolls, Taliesin notes with relief, which he tears into pieces and butters one by one, his strong hands deft and delicate with the task. He catches Taliesin looking and meaningfully indicates the water with a nod of his head. Meekly Taliesin takes another sip.

“Do you want to tell me what I- what happened?”

Cort laughs. “Probably rather less than what you’re imagining, given the state you're in. You got drunk - roaring drunk, mind you - and had a good time.”

That tells him absolutely fucking nothing.

“But why was I in a  _ dress?” _ he asks desperately, both hands tight around his cup. “I had paint all over my face.”

“You still do.” Cort sounds so sanguine it’s almost as if he’s enjoying this.

“I kissed someone.” It’s not really a question, but he needs it confirmed.

“You rather did, yes.”

Gods, he is a fucking  _ moron _ . He raises the glass to his forehead and presses his hot brow against it, wanting to shatter the thing in his face.

“But you were kissing me too,” Cort adds at his leisure, licking butter off his thumb in a way that would be absolutely captivating if Taliesin wasn’t positively suicidal. “So it wasn’t as if I could be jealous.”

“Did I do more than kissing?” He sounds so weary, not responding well at all to being teased, and Cort gives him a hard look, the smile on his mouth dropping away.

“Don’t be stupid. You were off your ass. Do you really think I’d stand by and watch you do something I know you’d regret?”

“No,” Taliesin admits, relieved but chastised. “But that doesn’t really say anything about how it made you feel.”

Cort looks at him a moment longer and then sighs, displacing the tray and Taliesin’s empty cup to pull Taliesin down on the bed, curled on his side with his head in his lap. It feels so much better lying down, and Taliesin wraps his fingers in the fraying hem of Cort’s shirt as Cort starts to rub his scalp. There is silence for many, many long moments; he can almost feel the thoughts coalescing in Cort’s mind, words arranging themselves into an orderly queue before he lets them march out of his mouth. He wishes he could be that way too, instead of how he is, haring off in every direction.

“I’m not upset with you, Taliesin. It’s just how you are.”

“How I am?”

“You like people. You like pretty things. You want to touch them, it’s only natural.”

That doesn’t make him feel better  _ at all. _ It must show in the expression on his face, because Cort is peering down at him with an look all too knowing.

“You think I want to keep you all to myself.”

“Don’t you?”

Cort laughs. “Of course I do, but I’m not going to hoard you like a sack of gold. If you think you might want to be with other people on occasion, that’s something we should talk about so you don’t make yourself sick to death with it.”

“But I don’t want to  _ be _ with anyone else,” he protests miserably, and Cort shakes his head.

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

He supposes that’s true, but it’s not exactly a comfort. Before, when they were - together? - in Arrabar, he’d sleep with other people and was happy enough because he was sleeping with Cort too. And it had a purpose, or so he told himself. To keep suspicion off of them, to maintain the status quo. But it was also  _ fun  _ and  _ spontaneous  _ and he always knew who he was leaving with at the end of the night, so it felt sort of-

Safe.

Him fucking people with Cort in the next room felt  _ safe _ . Gods, he is  _ such an asshole. _

Corts fingers resume threading through his hair and the urge to wail recedes like an outgoing tide. It hasn’t escaped him, not even in his absurd state, that Cort has unscrupulously picked  _ this  _ moment to have this conversation, while he’s weakened and pathetic and honest, all but putty in his hands.

He must really care about this. Taliesin isn’t sure how that makes him feel.

“I can’t believe you’re giving me permission to fuck other people.”

Maybe he’s being deliberately obtuse, because the corners of Cort’s eyes tighten. “Well I wouldn’t mind still being a  _ bit  _ involved if that’s alright with you, your highness.”

Taliesin just stares at him. Surely Cort isn’t - but he  _ is _ , looking down at him with an expression hopelessly open, eyes earnest and blue. 

“I know you love me, but is it selfish to still want to be a part of what you do?”

“No,” is all he can think to say. “Not at all.”

Cort doesn’t look entirely convinced, the pads of his thumbs stroking over Taliesin’s aching brow. It’s too distracting; he reaches for Cort’s hands and bracelets his fingers around his wrists.

“I didn’t realize this was something you’ve been thinking about.” And if they’re having this conversation at all, it’s because Cort has thought about it. A lot. Until he’s absolutely sure of what he wants to say. Cort has been this way since they were children, and Taliesin isn’t sure why he still carries so much doubt in his sincerity. Cort is a depressingly bad liar, but there are always still the things that he just won’t say.

“A bit. I thought it would come up sooner. You’ve been holding back.”

Has he? “I’ve been afraid to fuck this up.”

Cort softens at that, a ghost of a smile on his mouth as he frees his hands and helps Taliesin sit up, drawing him backward into his arms. They curl around him as warm and secure as a blanket, Cort’s chin resting on his shoulder. “You worry too much.”

Taliesin snorts. “Says you. You worry about things six months before they even exist.”

“That’s called planning.”

“Well planning is for responsible people.”

Cort laughs, presses a kiss against his neck. “One of us has to be.”

His cock should definitely not be interested in that. He barely has enough liquid in his body for blood, let alone an inconveniently timed erection. “Are you going to be responsible for me, then?”

He cranes his neck and Cort looks at him, one dark brow arched. “Aren’t I already?”

Taliesin can’t even begin to articulate how that makes him feel.

Cort leans in and kisses him as Taliesin starts to smile, just a quick press of lips against lips. “Your breath smells terrible.”

“Yes, yes it does.”

“I think you should go brush your teeth.”

“I think that’s probably wise.”

Cort laughs and lets him go. “And then I think you should come back here and get bread crumbs in my bed.”

_ “Bossy,” _ he remarks archly, one brow raised. He’s already feeling better. 

“Responsible,” Cort corrects, not offended in the slightest, and grins. “One of us has to be.”


	24. 23 (Part 2)

Regardless of their apparent understanding, Taliesin is on his best behavior for months.

It isn’t as if it’s really an imposition. Cort can command his full attention with the flick of a wrist or a glance from those unspeakably blue eyes, and anyway Taliesin loves him. He’s attentive, solicitous and as affectionate as he’s permitted to be, which feels limitless, almost unthinkably so, Cort never seeming inclined to deny him anything. It’s as if he almost finds it amusing, the way Taliesin is always underfoot, in and out of his pocket like a stray he’s fed once and allowed to follow him home.

It’s not a dignified image, but Taliesin has never been largely gifted in that area anyway. He’s also never considered himself particularly brave, which is probably why he finds himself treading water in the shallows, afraid to make the plunge. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Cort; if Cort says it, it’s true, and not just because he’s an abysmal liar. It’s what he _doesn’t_ say that is always of concern, whatever secrets and indecision he hides behind his slow smiles and the furrows in his brow.

And even more, he doesn’t trust himself not to ruin this.

It’s selfishness, selfishness either way, and when they’re in some port city carrying on as ridiculously as they do, he pretends not to see the way Cort looks at him, looks speculatively around the room, and then quietly sighs like Taliesin is being an obstinate mule. Cort may know him better than anyone else, but he still doesn’t know everything. Taliesin has never been happier, drunk on the kind of softness he’s never had and unwilling to come up for air even if it threatens to drown him. If he lets Cort look too closely at the recklessness inside him, the constant restless churning of currents under the surface, Taliesin is certain they’ll carry him away, out of reach like a distant shore.

It doesn’t bear thinking about and so he puts it from his mind, shuts his wildness up in a box with a lid so tight it changes the color of the world.

It’s because of that, he thinks, that he’s rather slow on the uptake.

He’s minding his business, nursing a pint as he waits for Cort to finish an errand, tucked up at the bar in the tavern where they’ve rented a room. It’s early yet, the place is quiet and mostly empty, and he thinks nothing of it when a short, wiry woman plants herself in the seat next to him and strikes up a conversation.

The first mate on a fast little freighter blasphemously named the _Sea Bitch’s Heart_ , Miranda Sirrasveti is about fifteen years his senior, sea-wise and sharp with a foul mouth and a look in her green eyes that promises, and delivers, an entertaining tale. A shock of gray lightens the chin-length darkness of her hair and she looks, above all else, rather rakish and piratical.

He’s two drinks in before it occurs to him that he finds her rather striking. Not that he has a type per se, Taliesin is sort of flexible in that regard, but the appeal is real and automatic and he’s just being too stupid in general to have been able to pick up on it before now. He’s even been flirting, slinging about his usual charming bullshit without having really thought it through, all of these realizations confirmed when Miranda polishes off her drink, slams her mug down on the bar, and looks over him with an assessing eye.

“What do you say we take this upstairs?” The request is forward, open and frank, and it’s exactly the kind of thing that appeals to him. It could be _easy_ ; he knows exactly what he’d be getting, a bit of fun and no strings attached, just a good time and maybe a good story, a nice way to pass an evening.

Right, because sex is _nice_ and apparently he’s a piece of shit who doesn’t assign any more importance to things most people think are intimate.

He’s not sure what he does when she says that; he thinks maybe he just blinks dumbly at her because Miranda starts to laugh. She has a nice laugh, throaty and loud, throwing her head back so that the sound carries to the ceiling. Still, she doesn’t apologize, just nails him with a fond little smile that’s halfway to a smirk, as though she finds how stupid he is adorable.

It’s fortunate, he thinks, that idiocy looks good on him, because it’s exactly this moment that Cort comes strolling in through the front door like a bolt of lightning out of a clear blue sky. He crosses to where they’re sitting and Taliesin _must_ be staring, because when he turns to look at Miranda again she’s wearing an expression on her face that is puzzled but increasingly knowing.

She doesn’t look upset though, and neither does Cort as he puts an automatic hand on Taliesin’s shoulder, sliding into a third spot to complete their little triangle at the bar.

“Hi,” he says and shakes Miranda’s hand, introducing himself.

“I’ve been monopolizing your friend,” she says, and the smirk on her mouth is again a touch speculative, as though quickly putting two and two together into an equation that defines all the parameters of the situation.

“He’s well worth monopolizing,” Cort says easily and smiles at them both, effortlessly striking up a conversation that smooths over the way Taliesin is awkwardly clutching his drink as though he’s been caught with his hand down his pants in a temple. He has no idea what they’re talking about, all of the words floating right over his head, and when his cup is empty Cort automatically buys them another round like he’s trying to put him at ease.

It’s stupid to feel like he ought to be in trouble; he hasn’t even _done_ anything, just sat there like a frog in a pot as it starts to boil. His bad luck that he hasn’t been quick enough to extricate himself, but this is where they are now and it’s almost too easy to fall back into the cadence of the conversation, to laugh as they banter back and forth and throw in his own ludicrous comments like this is all completely normal.

Because it is normal. He’s the only one making it weird, and Cort’s warm hand at the small of his back where he knows Miranda can’t see is comforting enough to woo him into relaxing.

And still, he’s too stupid and easy, startled all over again when Miranda seems to come to some unspoken conclusion, turning thoughtful green eyes on Cort this time. “I’d invited Taliesin here back to my room before, but I hadn’t realized he was… otherwise engaged. I don’t suppose the two of you…?”

He immediately chokes and only barely manages not to splutter, trying to draw as little attention to himself as possible because he desperately wants to know what Cort is going to say.

“Both of us? Well...” and he’s so fucking _charming_ , how _dare_ he. “I would hate to be disappointing. I only like to watch.”

Both Miranda’s eyebrows lift and _what the fuck is his life_ . “I think that can _definitely_ be arranged.”

Oh fuck, they’re really doing this. They’re both smirking at each other like they are the most clever people in the world, casually negotiating as if over the price of flour.

Could he actually fuck Miranda with Cort watching? _Absolutely_ , his dick supplies readily, the traitor thing immediately interested in the idea with no regard for repercussions whatsoever, already awkwardly pressing the front of his pants like it’s going to leap into the conversation and answer for him.

 _Why are you doing this to me?_ He thinks at it furiously, an answering pulse as though its talking back to him. _Shut up, you’ll like it._

And he will. He already knows that, and Cort already knows that, and by now Miranda definitely knows it too, her eyes casually sweeping down his body like she can sense exactly what is going on in his trousers. The way he’s sitting almost hurts, the constriction making him ache, and he’s not entirely sure whether it’s his brain or his dick that makes him polish off the rest of his ale, put the glass on the bar and shrug his shoulders.

“Why the fuck not.”

 


	25. 23 (Part 3) NSFW

Somehow they make it upstairs, nonchalant and effortless as though absolutely nothing tawdry is happening. Not that there is anyone around to notice and its not as if anyone cares, but he feels laughably self-conscious, wishing absently that he still had a drink in his hand, needing something to do that isn’t flap around awkwardly like a bird missing all its feathers. Miranda goes ahead of them to open the room, and Cort pauses with him at the top of the stairs, fingers warm on the small of his back and then on his cheek when Taliesin turns to look at him almost desperately.

If Cort is going to change his mind about this, Taliesin needs him to do it now before he digs his own grave and has to lie in it. He looks steady as ever though - if anything he’s concerned for Taliesin, whom no one should worry about ever, stroking his thumb over the curve of his cheek as though to ask if he’s alright.

It fills him with ridiculous warmth, blunts the cold edges of his anxiety like he’s dipped a toe into the water and found it inviting, lured in by a siren song. Reassured, he takes Cort’s hand and lets himself be led into Miranda’s room, and shuts the door behind them.

She’s sitting on the end of the bed when they enter, leaning back on her arms with her legs crossed. They look amazing in a pair of tall black boots he hasn’t had the wherewithal to appreciate before, toe of her top foot drawing lazy, graceful circles in the air as she waits, seeming unhurried.

He’s slept with more than one person plenty of times but he isn’t entirely sure how this is going to go, sailing uncharted waters. He’s got to do _something_ though, and he falls back on what’s easiest. Miranda is watching both of them with interest and he thinks he might as well give her something to look at.

He reaches out and hooks his fingers into Cort’s belt, drawing him languidly closer to press their hips together. He’s hard too, Taliesin can feel his cock pressing against his through the barrier of both their clothes, and it’s enough to surprise him out of the initiative, even if the physical confirmation chases away lingering doubt. Cort kissing him banishes any reservations, one hand curled into his hair to pull his head back. He’s barely an inch taller but somehow Taliesin always ends up underneath him, and he arches his back and lets himself be kissed until he thinks he’s going to explode.

It doesn’t take much, really. He can almost feel Miranda’s eyes on them like a physical thing, is aware of Cort angling their bodies so she can see his hand skirt the front of Taliesin’s shirt, thumbing his nipple and making him hiss before descending to possessively cup the bulge his cock makes in the front of his pants.

He sees fucking _stars_ , so pathetically excited by all of this his legs are shaking. “Shirt,” he hears Miranda say out of nowhere, her voice on the edge of his understanding, and he sees Cort’s mouth pull up into a lopsided smirk, turning loose of Taliesin’s cock to take hold of the hem of his shirt. Captivated, he pulls his arms up and lets Cort undress him, realizing too in a sudden moment of clarity that Miranda has her own trousers undone, a hand pushed down the front.

_Fuck_ that is fucking _hot_ and he is going to burn to death in it all like he’s found himself on the surface of the sun.

Cort steers them toward the bed and he lets himself be guided, standing in front of Miranda’s parted thighs with his chest bare and belt undone. Cort stops there, leaving him like a present half unwrapped, stepping back as Miranda reaches up to slide a hand over the tautness of his abdomen.

“You are a pretty thing, aren't you,” she sighs, a little shiver in her fingers, and he can't help but grin, flexing his hips and tensing all the muscles in his torso so they ripple beneath her touch. She laughs at that, delighted, and pulls her other hand free to unceremoniously make short work of his breeches.

His cock is overly eager, pressing forward against her slim fingers when his laces come undone, and he groans out loud when she curls them around the aching length of him, too caught up to censor himself. Miranda looks pleased, like she's congratulating herself on the purchase of a particularly fabulous hat, and he can't even bring himself to think of all the ways this should be a terrible idea because Cort has pulled a chair to the side of the bed and Taliesin can't stop looking at him. His cock is in Miranda’s capable grip and he's caught in the pull of Cort's ocean eyes, and like a thirsty fool in the desert he's ready to drown himself.

The silver rings on Miranda’s fingers are cool and smooth against his skin, and he throbs when she gives him a tug, drawing his attention back to what she's doing. She must have said something because he hears Cort laugh, low and sultry, and impossibly it makes him even harder. She's stroking him, fluid and slow; he wants more, angling his hips to thrust against her until a shudder ravages him, tight in his back and chest and stomach like he already wants to come.

“What do you think,” she asks, effortlessly including Cort in the game. “Should I let him off so easily?”

Cort is all dark heat and amusement where he sits, smouldering like a banked fire. “No.”

Taliesin whines, and then laughs despite himself, willing to play along. “Please? I'll be very, _very_ good.”

Miranda smirks, easing back more fully on the mattress with his cock still in hand. “Shall we see?”

He can take a hint, lowering himself to his knees at the edge of the bed. It's a shame, he thinks, to sacrifice the boots, but when she sets one ankle on his shoulder he takes them off of her so he can tug at her trousers, down and off until she's bare to the waist. She has lovely legs, slim and athletic and he buries himself between them.

He’s a bit out of practice; it’s been months since he’s touched a woman. It isn’t that he misses it exactly - what he has with Cort is everything he needs. Women are just _different;_ he likes the variance in sensation, in scent and touch and the breathy sounds she makes when he hits just the right spot, moves his tongue in just the right way, and feels her fingers curl tight into his hair. He pulls her legs over his shoulders and Miranda digs her heels into his back, thighs clenching tight as she comes apart beneath him with a bucking of hips and a long moan that crashes like a wave against the deck.

Naturally he’s pleased, and she’s laughing at him again when he lifts his head, smug with the shine of her slickness painted all across his mouth.

She grabs him by the chin, hauls him up the bed, and he’s just quick enough to kick his boots off and his trousers down before she’s flipped him over onto his back, settling astride his hips. He fills his hands with her breasts as she grinds her wet cunt against his neglected cock, making him swell to full hardness once more. He arcs up against her, thumbing the tight points of her nipples through the lingering barrier of her shirt until she takes it off, flinging it away to land draped over Cort’s lap, who smirks and gathers it into a fist.

He’s still there, sitting unobtrusively at the bedside, half-slouched in a chair with his chin on his hand. He seems unaccountably relaxed, but when his eyes meet Taliesin’s questioning gaze, they darken with some unspoken emotion. It makes him feel raw somehow, exposed. Cort has always seen the truth of him, at least more than most, and has never looked away; just one of the twenty thousand reasons Taliesin is hopelessly, overwhelmingly in love with him.

When Miranda kneels up and sheathes him inside her, he’s still looking at Cort. It’s hard to fathom that all that naked want there is for him, even though he knows that Cort doesn’t fancy women. It’s a hungry, wild look, like wolves prowling at the door, teeth to rip and rend and take him to pieces rather than devour him whole. It’s all he can do to keep from coming immediately, forcing himself to tear his eyes away and look back to Miranda. She’s watching him too, again with that keen look on her face as though she knows exactly the kind of thoughts are cycling through his mind, and then throws her head back, face to the ceiling, completely unconcerned.

She moves at her own discretion, establishes her own rhythm, and he lies still beneath her until he’s got his sea legs enough to match it. The room is humid, salt air and sex and the rising heat from the tavern below, and his chest and shoulders are slick with sweat. Her breasts shine with it, her hair damp and dark. Miranda gathers her own hands into it as she works her body over his, trusting in his grip on her hips to hold her steady.

She doesn’t seem inclined to kiss him, something that he hadn’t noticed in his eagerness to rub himself all over Cort on the way in, but he’s alright with that too. It affords him an amazing, unobstructed view, watching the way the muscles stand out against the smooth skin of her belly when she rolls her hips, the definition in her arms and the bounce of her small breasts. He likes watching almost as much as he likes being watched, the sight of his cock thrusting up into her wet, receptive body both lurid and erotic. He has to distance himself from it or it’ll all be over far too soon, his eagerness to please conflicting with how much he’d just like to come and come and come and then sleep like the dead, pliant and lissom, draped over Cort’s chest.

He still hasn’t when Miranda stiffens on top of him, her short cropped nails scoring his sides as she bears down around him, shuddering through a climax that seems to roll on and on, receding finally with a hiss like a wave retreating out to sea. It’s an incredible thing to watch, her low, throaty cry of pleasure bound up like a knot at the small of his back where pressure builds, and he doesn’t have the wherewithal to even protest at the briefest of pauses when she pulls herself up off of him and immediately takes him in her mouth.

“Oh holy fucking shit,” he hears himself say, immediately reaching above him to grasp the bars of the wobbly headboard, the metal cool and solid in his fists. He’s covered in her slick and her mouth is hot, lips tight and cheeks hollowed, and there’s no way he’s going to last, already wanting to thrust his hips upward and drive in deep.

He doesn’t, barely, because he doesn’t know her that well and it might be rude, clinging to this nonsensical thought as his pleasure rapidly crests, starts to curl over -

She stops. “Ask.”

“Oh _fuck_ , can I?”

Miranda rolls her eyes. “Ask _him_.”

He. Is. Going. To. Die. That’s what it feels like anyway, red hot, hard, and stretched out over the bed with a warm mouth nibbling at his shaft, leaking precum and desperation everywhere. And still, it’s not really about his cock at all but about Cort, because everything important to him is always about Cort, whose untapped desire curls heavy around Taliesin’s throat like a leash even from a distance.

“Please,” he says, because Taliesin knows what that does to him, and again, _please,_ when he doesn’t move and Miranda takes just the head of him into her mouth.

The tip of her tongue drags slowly in circles against his sensitive skin, and it’s almost too much, enough to bring him right up to the edge. He hovers there, entreaties and appeals spilling from his mouth, open and needy and entirely unselfconscious, heart leaping with joy and relief when Cort finally nods.

“Come, Taliesin.”

And he does, oh fuck how he fucking does, hands pulling at the bars in the headboard until his fingers ache and the thing starts to come forward at an angle. His body is so tight it’s nearly painful, the muscles in his abdomen aching, but he spills himself in agonizing, euphoric waves that leave him drained and languid, boneless as a piece of flotsam on the beach.

When he comes back down to earth the first thing he does is laugh. It’s a strange sound, breathy and exhausted and oddly relieved, as though he hadn’t realized how worried over the whole thing he’d been until the moment Miranda catches the shirt Cort tosses her and leans over Taliesin to lay a smacking kiss on his forehead.

“Nice work, boys. I’ll give you a minute.”

She slips out of the room, boots in hand, ostensibly down to the shared bath at the end of the hall, leaving them alone. He’s just lying there he realizes, naked and unwound and a mess, and he sits up with a slow groan and searches for his pants.

“That was-” he starts and can’t quite finish the sentence, not certain of what he really wants to say, suddenly unsure if he should actually be this contented, if maybe happiness is a sign of his ultimate weakness, an inability to be satisfied.

Cort moves for the first time in what feels like an hour, uncurling from his chair and coming to sit on the edge of the bed where Taliesin is attempting to jam his foot into his shoe. He takes Taliesin by the chin and pulls his head up, drawing his attention to his face, blue eyes searching.

“Was that alright?”

Taliesin blinks, surprised. He’s obviously fine, and the question is like something _he_ ought to ask. He isn’t sure suddenly what to say, and the fact that he doesn’t answer immediately only makes Cort double down, framing his face with both hands, hesitant concern clear in the furrows of his brow.

“Did you like it?”

“Yes,” he says, because he thinks he’d better say _something_ , even though how he feels about anything is not remotely important. “Did you?”

Cort doesn’t answer him, just grabs him roughly by the back of the neck and pulls him in, crushing Taliesin’s mouth under his. It’s bruising, too hard, teeth clinking, angles of their lips at odds, but something tight and hidden uncurls in Taliesin’s chest like a newly budded leaf, taking heart, growing strong in the sun. He lets himself be kissed until Cort wants to stop; it doesn’t take as long as it might have, but he understands why when Cort grabs his wrist in one hand and his discarded shirt and shoe in the other and drags him out of Miranda’s room.

Theirs isn’t far away, and Cort has the door unlocked and open faster than Taliesin thinks is possible. He can’t keep from laughing, feeling lightheaded and giddy and a bit drunk with it all, allowing himself be unceremoniously yanked through, stumbling in his single boot.

“Cort-” he starts and is immediately cut off, thrown abruptly up against the wall. He stumbles, tilting over, and ends up wedged against the table and Cort’s body as Cort flings the things he’s carrying carelessly to one side and grabs Taliesin hard by the hips, manhandling him up to sit on its surface.

“Off,” he orders, a hand yanking impatiently at the waistband of Taliesin’s pants, not even a second’s pause before his own shirt is flung away. Taliesin can barely keep up with him, kicking his lone boot free and his pants back down again.

He isn’t sure why Cort let him get dressed in the first place though he’s certainly not going to complain about his enthusiasm. Not when he’s usually so measured, so careful and sure, solid stones stacked to make an unshakable wall. Now he’s a wildfire and his hands burn Taliesin’s skin, fingers digging into his waist, his shoulder, his thighs, twisting hard into his hair and dragging his head to the side until it’s all he can do just to hold on, startled sounds of pleasure-pain spilling out of his mouth unchecked as he feels Cort’s teeth against his neck, on his collarbone, in the curve of his shoulder.

He shouldn’t be hard already, it’s quick even for him, but he’s throbbing, cock jutting up obscenely against the flat of his stomach. It begs for attention that it doesn’t receive, and he's wracked with a shudder as he’s turned unceremoniously over the edge of the table. The wood feels cool against the heat of his face, cheek pressed to its flat surface as Cort kicks his ankles apart and drops his trousers just enough to let his cock free.

Oh _fuck_ , it’s absolutely _mad_ , too fast, burning up the border of reckless like a field on the edge of a forest fire, and he wants this so much, ready even though he isn’t, moronic and unafraid of pain. Cort is still Cort; he takes the time to slick them both with oil, but the preparation is minimal and when he begins the long press of his body into Taliesin’s, it drives all the air out of his lungs. It hurts but it doesn’t, the burn fading quickly into an agonizing fullness.

He’s desperate to move but Cort pins him tight to the table, hands curled around his wrists until they ache within his grip, his strong body stretched out over Taliesin’s back. It’s crushing, captivating, and he feels consumed, ready to just lie here and let Cort use every bit of him until he’s wrecked and empty, a puddle of his own sweat and lust and spend.

But it’s Cort, still Cort, who can break his heart with just a look.

“You are so fucking _beautiful,”_ he grinds out against the back of Taliesin’s shoulder, teeth sinking in above his shoulder blade. “Seeing you with someone else- coming for me like that- _fuck,_ you drive me _crazy.”_ He hasn’t stopped, hasn’t slowed, and Taliesin’s hands are fists, one long keen of a sound spilling past his lips though he can’t hear it, isn’t even aware.

“Tell me,” he pleads, because he needs to hear Cort say that he enjoyed it as much as he needs Cort to fuck love into him, and Cort makes a low, dangerous sound deep in his throat that curls directly around his cock.

“Do you have any idea what you do to me? What it’s like to sit there, watching you, watching this body of yours?”

“Tell me,” he says again, voice tight around a whimper and the bruising rattle of his hip bones against the edge of the table.

“I could watch you for _hours_ . The way your body moves- _fuck.”_ Cort drags in a ragged breath against the side of his neck as though caught between tenderness and the urge to tame him, kissing him softly and then biting down hard enough to make him lurch.

“You could have had me then, I doubt- _ah._ I doubt Miranda would have cared.”

“Maybe I wanted you all to myself. Maybe I wanted to have you just like this; ready for me, begging for it.”

And he had done his fair share of begging, hadn’t he? He’d do it again too, a million times over, just to see the way Cort’s eyes go dark, pupils blown wide in the blue like wells of unfathomable depth.

“Oh _fuck,”_ he can’t help but swear, unable to put together anything more coherent than a sound too much like a sob. “Cort-”

“Come if you want. Just know that I’m not done with you.”

He does, because he can’t help himself, wound too tight, caught up in the imagery and Cort’s voice, low and determined in his ear. He’s already come once; the second time is more intense, and he thrusts his cock against the empty air hard enough to disrupt Cort’s rhythm. He doesn’t stop or wait for Taliesin to go still beneath him again though eventually he does, gasping for breath and shuddering, wrung out and oversensitive, his legs weak and shaking.

The table slams up against the wall each time Cort moves but it takes their weight and he is glad for its support, uncertain in his ability to hold himself up if he had to. This could feel punishing, like _punishment_ , but it doesn’t; he’s had his experiences with that, knows what that’s like. This is something else entirely he thinks, Cort’s need to stake his claim. Even if it’s something like possession, it’s jealousy channeled into positive desire and it doesn’t make him hurt, doesn’t take anything from him.

Maybe it shouldn’t make him feel so fucking good either but it does, beyond even the slick sensation of Cort inside him that has half convinced his body it could come again. He doesn’t care about that at all, too caught up in this bizarre feeling of safety that spreads itself out like a net over him, tingling everywhere Cort touches. Cort isn’t disgusted by the way he is, Cort _wants_ him, and more than that, Cort understands him. He can just _be_.

Oh for fuck’s sake, he might just come again after all. He doesn’t think he’s even got anything left to give, like his balls might detach from his body and go on the lam to stop him abusing their good nature, but he just can’t care. And he knows what Cort needs to hear.

“I’m yours.”

_“Yes.”_

There it is, he thinks, the stutter in Cort’s hips that starts to signal the end. He says it a few more times, the word rolling off his tongue easier than he could ever have imagined in all of his years of pretending he wanted to belong to no one and nothing, chasing a freedom he couldn’t even define. _Yours, yours, only yours._

“Mine,” Cort says, low against his ear. It sounds like an agreement rather than a proclamation, an acknowledgement of something real and concrete, and his hands loosen from around Taliesin’s wrists, reaching to lace their fingers together, holding tight. “You can look at, you can touch, you can fuck, anyone else you want. In the end you’ll always be just _mine.”_

And, absurd thing he is, he does manage to come again. Or at least he thinks so. He is fairly certain his body is not supposed to work like this and it definitely kind of hurts, but it’s also worth it because it sets Cort to spilling inside of him, collapsing heavily over his back and flattening him against the table. He doesn’t even mind, pulling Cort’s arms around him like a blanket, their fingers still intertwined.

Taliesin can feel him trembling, a quiet groan when they slide apart, and has to stop him when he immediately moves to do that ridiculous thing where he thinks wants to pick tall-as-fuck, almost-as-big-as-he-is Taliesin up and carry him around. “Don’t you dare. Go sit down.”

Cort does, falling onto the bed with a grunt and scooting himself up against the headboard when Taliesin comes to him, glass of water in hand. He’s tried to clean himself up a little but at a certain point he just doesn’t care, tired and sated down to his bones. Cort opens his arms and Taliesin turns himself to one side, both of his legs over one of Cort’s strong thighs, to lean his shoulder up against Cort’s chest and be able to see his face.

Maybe it’s a mistake. Haze lifted, Cort looks at him as though for the first time and immediately frowns, brows pulling together like a storm to cloud over his expression. He lifts Taliesin’s chin, turns his head, and Taliesin hasn’t seen it yet but Cort’s handiwork has always been rather thorough.

“Stop,” he says, and bats Cort’s hand away. It’s entirely pointless because the other one automatically comes up to take its place, and eventually he just rolls his eyes and sits there and lets him do it, knowing he won’t be dissuaded until he’s found every little bruise and mark on Taliesin’s whole body.

“Satisfied?” He’s too tired to be snappish but Cort frowns at him just the same, his hand curled loosely around the base of Taliesin’s throat, fingers lightly stroking a tender spot at the crook of his neck and shoulder. “Cort?” he prompts when Cort doesn’t answer him, tipping his head to one side, trying to catch his gaze when he looks away.

Cort swallows hard, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye after a drawn out moment of held breath and nothingness. It’s almost as if he’s afraid to look at him and Taliesin just stops, the hands clutched around his glass dropping into his lap. “What’s wrong. What’ve I done.”

“Why do you _always_ think it’s you, when- that’s- it isn’t even-” and holy shit, measured, thoughtful Cort is losing his words. Taliesin hasn’t seen this happen in _ages_ and he almost isn’t sure what to make of it, sitting still and silent and trying to wrap his mind around it while Cort squeezes his eyes shut and smacks his head backward into the headboard, bright spots of color staining his high cheekbones.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he orders, eyes still closed.

“Sorry.” But he isn’t really and he doesn’t sound it, almost amused even though he knows he shouldn’t be. “Want to tell me what this is all about?”

Cort is silent for a long time, eventually opening his eyes to look at Taliesin again, who has pulled the sheets over them in the meantime as though what this situation requires is the addition of a fluffy pillow and a couple of blankets. He looks carefully neutral, jaw pointedly not clenched, but the strain of something is still evident in his eyes.

“I just- didn’t mean to be so rough with you,” he says eventually, and Taliesin thinks the stutter here is because the words are hard to say, not because he hasn’t thought them out. “I didn’t think I was, but…” and there the words just stop completely, some of the stress in his eyes beginning to leech into other parts of his face. He keeps looking at Taliesin’s neck, his shoulders and down to his wrists and hips and up again, his touch hesitant on Taliesin’s knee and lower back like he’s afraid to lay hands on him but can’t figure out anything else to do with his arms.

And Taliesin, because he’s a completely unforgivable jackass, starts to laugh.

“Oh, sweetheart. That’s adorable.”

“What do you-”

“Really, that’s just the sweetest-”

“Taliesin.” Cort’s voice is flat and colorless and Taliesin shakes his head.

“Darling, I’ve been _stabbed_. I’ve been shot with _arrows_. Once I walked into a wall so hard I broke my toe, and all of _that_ really hurt. This,” he gestures vaguely with his cup, narrowly avoiding spilling water on the both of them. “This is nothing.”

“You haven’t seen a mirror.”

“I don’t need to. I feel fine.”

“You are almost _never_ fine,” Cort grouses, and the stricken look hasn’t quite faded from his face, but his hands move now, warm and gentle over Taliesin’s cooling skin. His fingers skim up his spine and curl around his shoulder, and with a little sigh Taliesin lets himself be pulled against Cort’s chest, tucking his head against the side of his throat. Cort’s hair is loose and a bit wild and he can’t be bothered to brush it out of the way, sore and sleepy despite their conversation.

Maybe it makes him a bit stupid, or a bit honest, he isn’t sure which. He should probably just let this go, but realistically he’s terrible at that. “I would let you hurt me,” he says, and means it. “If you wanted to. If I wanted you to. But that’s not what this was. I’m not a thing you’re going to knock off a shelf and break, love.”

He’s cheating a bit with that he thinks; even if Cort can’t bring himself to ever fucking say it back, he still likes hearing it.

Eventually he sighs, turns his head to lay a kiss against Taliesin’s hair. “I wanted to prove to you that this is something we can do. I hope I didn’t do otherwise.”

“Are you kidding? I’ll go downstairs and kiss the bartender right this minute if it means you’ll fuck me like that again.” Cort laughs and it makes him laugh too, and then wince a little, reminded subtly of all the places he aches. “Tomorrow, maybe. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

“You mad thing,” Cort whispers against his hair, mouth curled up into a smile. “You mad, mad little thing.”

Taliesin is too tired, and too smug, to really take offense.


	26. 23 (Part 4) NSFW

They don’t go out again, spending lazy hours in their rented room, narrowing the crush of the outside world to just their two. They order up a bath and sit together in it until the water is cold, falling back into bed until Cort eventually deigns to put on pants and brings them up some food. They eat, ravenous, and then sleep like the dead, and when Taliesin wakes first, stirred by distant noises from the tavern below in the middle of the night, he’s filled with such softness it makes it hard to breathe.

Cort looks peaceful in sleep, brow smooth and mouth relaxed, head pillowed on one arm and the other curled around Taliesin’s back, so lovely it almost breaks his heart. He would have a fit if he could see Taliesin lying there watching him, stubbornly hypocritical about that despite the way he watches Taliesin all the time, but he doesn’t wake.

Not, at least, until Taliesin slips down beneath the sheets and takes his half-hard cock into his mouth. It swells with obliging interest and he lets himself get lost in the sensation, taking his time, retracing familiar territory.

He’ll never get tired of this, the salt taste of Cort’s skin, the way it flushes with a rush of blood, the weight of him heavy on his tongue. Maybe it’s an unorthodox way to show love but he pours his heart into it, unhurried and indulgent even when Cort wakes and reaches to card his fingers through Taliesin’s hair. That’s love too he thinks, or something very like it, the way he can stay so still and just let Taliesin have his way, quiet and gentle even when his thighs grow tense and the muscles in his abdomen clench, the hard vee of his hips defined.

Taliesin could kiss him there for hours, map every inch with his lips, but Cort’s eyes are so blue and deep in the half-darkness that he can’t help himself, sitting up and readying them both so he can straddle Cort’s lap and take him inside. He aches, still tender, but he moves at his leisure and Cort lets him take charge, thumb stroking over Taliesin’s side and the marks the edge of the table left behind.

It feels like it takes forever and he sighs, back arched and limbs heavy, when he’s fully seated. They don’t even move for what seems like ages, his hands on Cort’s shoulders and Cort’s fingers on his hips, loose and controlled and endlessly patient. They take it slow, agonizingly quiet, the soft noise of the mattress shifting louder than the sound of their shared breath.

When Taliesin leans forward, propping himself up with hands on Cort’s chest, Cort touches him everywhere, sweeping his fingers through Taliesin’s hair, over the insides of his thighs, his bent knees, the small of his back. He doesn’t touch his cock though, not without permission. Taliesin is grateful, still sore and spent, not even sure he wants to come though the slide of Cort within him has him ready enough. This isn’t about that, it’s about him and Cort and the way he suddenly needs to make Cort feel like he’s enough, that he’ll always be enough, that Taliesin has learned how to live with Cort’s hand around his heart.

He watches the lines at the corners of Cort’s eyes deepen when he gets close, brows knit together in concentration, willing to try and draw this out as long as Taliesin wants him to. He appreciates that like he always does, cherishes Cort’s strength in stillness, the purposeful submission that seems nothing like weakness, but he only wants to make him feel good. He leans down over his chest and kisses him, lips parting against the contrastingly hard hunger of Cort’s mouth as arms curl around his body, holding them together.

“Come for me, love,” he murmurs and Cort’s head bows back, his arms tightening in their hold as he starts to move for the first time, a little less gentle, a little less slow, until his fingertips bite into Taliesin’s shoulder blades. He spills himself all in a rush of liquid heat and the caress of a quiet sigh, coming down to unfurl pliant and relaxed once more against the bed.

Taliesin holds him when he shivers, lips soft against his brow, and when Cort opens his eyes its to look at him with an expression so tender it makes him want to cry. He doesn’t though, just showers him in lazy, gentle kisses from the top of his head to his collarbone, feeling his body calm as Cort slowly softens inside of him.

“Do you want me to…?” Cort asks, fingers on his hip as Taliesin eases off of him and curls up at his side, one leg flung over both of his thighs. He hasn’t come but he doesn’t miss it, only half hard in his weariness, feeling pleasantly used. He shakes his head and Cort just nods, accepting that for what it is and drawing him in close, pillowing Taliesin’s head against his shoulder.

“Thank you,” he says eventually, fingers light in the damp curls at the nape of Taliesin’s neck.

“I love you,” Taliesin reminds him, and immediately falls asleep.

*

They see Miranda again only once, tipped a wink and a knowing smile as she strolls out the tavern doors and into the wild beyond. The rest of the time they spend wrapped up in each other with a kind of closeness that goes beyond simply sex even though it seems they're always naked, quiet words and gentle touches that make his heart feel overfull.

This has been good, he realizes. This new thing between them is good, and he is _grateful_.

They try it again the next time they’re at port, and again after that. It’s always someone different, something new. Cort never initiates it again though, preferring not to push, sitting back to let Taliesin choose. For his part, Taliesin attempts to choose _well_.

There’s a type that works best - someone a little older, worldwise, unattached; a tavern wench or a fellow sailor, girls for hire with enough smile in their eyes and sass in their mouths to give Taliesin a hard time of it and to make Cort laugh.

Always women though. He’s never been able to shake the memory of that conversation on the beach from years and years before, and with it the knowledge that it makes Cort jealous to see him with other men.

There is part of him that believes that Cort actually _likes_ to be a little jealous, that he gets off on it, on the lengthy process of reclaiming Taliesin afterwards, but Cort never seems to want to fuck anyone but him and he likes women well enough anyway. It seems a safer thing, an unspoken rule they only break once with a slim young man with a beautifully painted face and a corset that a half-drunk Cort curiously raps his knuckles against like a door. The sex is average, but poetic, and afterward Cort fucks him into a mattress that reeks of perfume.

But it doesn’t happen every time. Sometimes it’s still just _them_ \- Taliesin makes sure of that. He doesn't need someone else there to help him want Cort, that’s automatic, and fun as it is, Cort doesn’t have to buy his attention with novelty. More than just sweet nothings and flattering bedroom talk, he really does belong to Cort.

He'll probably die that way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End of Part III


	27. 24

“You sure about this?”

It’s about the seventh time he’s asked, well deserving of the way Cort rolls his eyes and fixes him with an exasperated look. “Stop fretting, mum.”

Taliesin snorts. “I’m just checking. You know tattoos  _ are  _ forever.”

“Yes, it had occurred. Just like the last six times you asked.”

“Are you counting?”

“You’re buying me a drink if you get to ten.”

Taliesin narrows his eyes and Cort narrows his eyes right back, one of his slow, wide smiles dawning when Taliesin wrinkles his nose. “Fine, you’re a big boy.”

“Am I now.”

“Oh do shut up.”

“The two of you done yet?” The grizzled man with the needle asks, one eyebrow lifting and taking the scrawling script that decorates his scalp and forehead up with it. “Or do I need to give you the room.”

Cort coughs and Taliesin snickers, sitting back in his chair and folding his hands in his lap like a schoolboy playing at being well behaved. “By all means Gan, work your magic.”

Cort doesn’t look like he’s buying any of it, his eyes wary on Taliesin’s face, watching him attempt to hold back a smile so closely he flinches the first time Gan puts the needle in. “Shit.”

“I told you s-”

“Shut it.”

He rolls his eyes and obediently bites his lips, raising both hands in pretend innocence, but Cort isn’t really watching him anymore, his blue eyes flicking leerily and then with interest between his forearm and Gan’s deft hands as they move the needle over his skin. Cort’s bad luck that he’s picked a wrist tattoo for his first but he insisted, and as stubborn as he claims Taliesin is, no amount of warning and alternate suggestions would persuade him otherwise.

Still, Cort’s picked a good one if he might say so himself, for all that he’s still a bit surprised. And simple too, as tattoos go; just a cluster of fourteen starred points -  _ elianthus _ , the star shark, and the namesake of their ship. Taliesin has one too, just higher up and curled around with waves, part of his ongoing project to cover his left arm in ink. He’s explained them all over the years, lying naked in bed with callused fingers soft on his arm. That this is the one that Cort picked of them all, of any in the world he could have, is oddly sentimental.

No, it’s  _ blatantly  _ sentimental, which is why he supposes he’s been so invested in Cort being happy with it. As ever though, once the man makes up his mind it stays made, which should be annoying but in reality is just one reason in a sea of twenty thousand that he’s the love of Taliesin’s young, ridiculous life.

It doesn’t even kill him to admit that anymore.

Even with the minimalist design, Cort’s arm is red and bleeding by the time Gan is through, and his expression is vaguely pained though he hasn’t complained once. It’ll take some time to heal before it looks quite right but Cort seems unconcerned, listening to Gan patiently explain how to care for the healing marks as though his arm might fall off him if he doesn’t adhere to every word.

Two in twenty thousand. Thank the gods he’s long past the point of pining away forever unrequited or this really might be the death of him.

“There now, that wasn’t so bad,” he says soothingly, as if Cort had been nervous about it all along. 

“You might have warned me it would fucking hurt.”

“Hurt? What? A big strapping lad like yourself? Can you even feel pain?”

“I feel that you’re a pain in my ass.”

“You could be a pain in mine,” he says, purposefully lewd and Cort rolls his eyes so hard it looks like it hurts, reaching out to hook an arm around his neck in a move that is half a hug, half a headlock.

“You are  _ so _ lucky we’re in public right now,” he says lowly, lips brushing Taliesin’s ear just enough to evoke a shiver, and doesn’t let him go, ducking them beneath a line of colorful scarves as they stroll through the night market. 

The city is awake now that the sun has gone down, chasing the worst of the summer heat away though it still clings to the masoned buildings and flagstones, radiating warmth through the alleyways. The air smells of fish but also of cooking food, filled with chattering voices of merchants plying their wares and common folk out to enjoy a cooler breezes, lending the night a carnival atmosphere though for the most part this is business as usual.

They dodge a flock of children who run past on bare feet and stop off to buy a bottle, winding back to their tavern to sneak up the back stairs to the rooftop where the landlordess hangs out the washing. Faded aprons wave in the cool wind off the sea, faintly stiff with ever present salt, and they steal a blanket to sprawl out on, lying on their backs under the stars and passing the bottle between them.

“Still pleased about it?” Taliesin asks when he catches Cort fussing with the bandage, gently tugging his fingers away to keep him from itching at the wounds.

“‘Course,” Cort says and turns hazy eyes on him, warm and sweet in the dim glow emanating from the windows of the other buildings on the block. “Got a piece of you now.”

That trips him up, raises a lump in his throat for just a split second before he’s able to swallow it down with a swig of burning liquor. This fucker, every time he says shit like this-

“Too bad it’s on your wanking arm,” he deflects, and then waggles his eyebrows suggestively. “Stuck with me forever.”

“Gods, you’re right,” Cort pretends to groan. “I’ll have to start using the left, you know how I hate that.”

“Just because you’re uncoordinated.”

“Just because you’re ambi- ambidex- fuck.”

Taliesin throws back his head and laughs, tipping backwards and nearly spilling alcohol all over himself. Cort leans up and takes the bottle away from him, managing to set it down somewhere over their heads before he lets momentum carry him all the way over, stretching out half across Taliesin’s body, propped up on his elbow.

Taliesin pillows his head on one arm and looks up at him, lifting the other to curl gently against Cort’s cheek. He’s rewarded with a kiss against his wrist and several more that trail upwards along his arm, ending at the small constellation nearly hidden in the curling waves near the inside of his elbow. It’s a bit sloppy because they’re both a bit gone, but it’s also easy, familiar, comfortable like a pair of boots worn in to fit just right. 

Just one of twenty thousand things.


	28. 25 (Part 1)

No matter how good things are, they can’t stay the same forever.

They’re in Hlath for the year, stationed at the naval outpost while the  _ Star Shark _ undergoes some much needed repair, and then set for patrols at the mouth of the Vilhon Reach where pirate ships attempt their encroach year after year. It’s the first time he’s been on solid land for this long in ages and it feels strange, filling him with a kind of restless anticipation, eager to be back out on the water. If not for Cort it would be unbearable and he would have fucked his way through at least three brothels by now, bored and stupid with all his loose ends fraying.

Not that they’re not still in and out of brothels, but he has to admit that Cort’s steady presence at his side has curbed some of his more excessive urges. He’s downright domestic, doing simple things like shopping in the market for sheets less terrible than the ones in Cort’s rented tavern room where he may or may not be staying instead of in the barracks. It might be bending his original rule just a little bit, but the place is overcrowded anyway and Veda doesn’t give a crap as long as he’s where he’s supposed to be when he’s supposed to be there. 

The captain has never once commented on their relationship though it would be impossible for him not to know. If anything he looks a tiny bit smug about it whenever he catches them out together, smirking at the way they ease apart and pretend at innocence. He always has known more about the things Taliesin does than he should, definitely more than Taliesin has ever shared of his own accord, and after a certain point he can’t even be anxious about it anymore. If there’s a problem he’ll hear about it, and until then he’ll just be happy.

Happy. Imagine.

It seems strange, but he really is. Happy, that is. Happy knowing he’ll see Cort later after the devastatingly tedious errand he dodged having to go on, happy at the way the sun is shining and how the sky is clear and blue, happy even to be in this market with Rix, watching his blonde barely-there beard grow in as he moons after some girl through a window of a seamstress’ shop. Ostensibly he’s being supportive because that’s what friends do, and that it’s also hilarious is not strictly his fault.

He remembers, though, what it’s like to be young (younger) and nervous, the clammy hands and the racing heart, the anxious virgin in a brothel while all his mates wait cheering outside, and though they’ve already crossed that particular hurdle with Rix he also isn’t invested in pressuring the lad. He’ll find his way in his own time, like Taliesin did, and if this Marjorie girl is what makes his boy a man, Taliesin certainly has the time to waste, loitering around in the marketplace and enjoying the day.

Rix finally girds his loins and goes into the shop and Taliesin laughs to himself, rolling his shoulders and sliding away from the wall he’s been leaning on. If he makes it more than three minutes he could be in there forever, and Taliesin jams his hands in his pockets and waits until he’s well and truly bored before turning to wander off between the stalls.

As he does he catches the eye of an older man across the way. Shaggy blondish hair, scruffy beard, sleeves rolled up above his elbows. He’s clearly eyeing him and not in the way that Taliesin is sort of used to. It isn’t speculative at all; the man looks like he’s seen a ghost.

He averts his gaze when he sees Taliesin looking, nervously turning to putter with something at his stall. A merchant Taliesin supposes, hawking fabric wares of some kind, and he’s prepared to let it go as an oddity until the man looks over his shoulder again, clearly marking his position in the crowd.

Well.

Honestly it’s these moments that make him wish for Cort, who would look at him like he’s gone slightly wilty in the sun, shake his head and tell him to leave nice folk alone. But he’s not here and Taliesin is, and he’s never been very good at not poking at curious things like they might be treasure washed up on the shore. Mostly that’s not the case but one day it  _ could  _ be and - anyway, before he can overthink it, Taliesin walks over there.

“Hi.”

The guy jumps when he sees him standing there on the other side of the laden wooden table and looks instantly guilty, quickly trying to pull a pleasant facade over the expression. It’s a bit obsequious, more than the usual fare of  _ does the young man need a bauble for his pretty mistress _ , and he can feel one of his eyebrows go up all on its own.

The man coughs. “What can I do for you, milord?”

That strikes Taliesin as odd too; he is  _ some  _ kind of lord he supposes but he doesn't look like one in plain shirt and trousers. 

“Do I know you?” The man grimaces, caught out, and Taliesin just can’t leave it alone.  _ “Should _ I know you?”

“No reason to milord.”

“It’s just that you were looking at me like-”

“Please,” he says, a little desperately, and like a shark scenting blood in the water Taliesin leans a bit closer, unable to turn loose of this. “I don’t want any trouble.”

“No trouble,” he says easily and smiles, though he knows what that smile looks like. It’s not a particularly trustworthy expression, not exactly benign, and he sees the fellow swallow hard. “I’d just like to know who you thought I was.”

It’s a reach but usually his instincts are good, and the man blinks and rubs the back of his gnarled hand over his sweating forehead, casting his blond hair into a disarray. “You just- have the look of someone I knew before.”

“Who?”

“Milord, if you’re not going to buy anything-”

“Who.”

The man sighs. “A merchant lord out of Arrabar, by the name of-”

“Ferryman,” Taliesin finishes for him, the pieces slipping into place with a sickening quickness. It’s his family name, it’s not like he never hears it, but he’s gotten used to being Taliesin, just Taliesin, and the sound of it feels too slick, slippery and distasteful like grease on a doorknob.

“You’re one of the sons, aren’t you.” The acknowledgement is there, probably read in the stunned expression he tries to purge from his features, not quick enough to avoid detection.

“Taliesin.”

“The youngest,” the man acknowledges. “You have his look.”

“So I’ve been told.” The reminder makes him feel cold, like he’s suddenly plunged into water slurry with ice; it takes the breath out of him.

He hates that, hates the similarities between them. He doesn’t have to think about it most of the time, so far removed as he’s made himself - as his father’s made him - but whenever he thinks of it he doesn’t even care that the features he’s inherited are handsome ones; he just wants them to be different.

Dorhal no doubt feels the same. When he was a boy there had been plenty of times, stuck dancing on his father’s capricious whims, where he’d wished he’d looked like Jorran, with his mother’s fine features, or even pig-faced, ape-fisted Gordri. Instead he’d grown up looking just like his father, a smaller, weaker, unsatisfactory version, and he’d paid for it. Dorhal couldn’t even pretend away paternity of his youngest son with his own features staring him in the face, and he’d paid for that too.

The merchant is watching him with wary, careful eyes, and the expression too is an eerie callback to earlier times that he’d rather just forget. He recognizes the intimidating cant of his body, looming over this poor soul, and retreats immediately, straightening to stand. “Whatever slight my father has dealt you, and undoubtedly there are many, I can only offer my apologies. We haven’t spoken in many years.”  _ I’m not him. _

The man seems to think that over, finally nodding though the wariness hasn’t faded from his eyes. It makes Taliesin’s skin itch, shame playing its fingers in sharp crescendo down his spine. He knows he should just walk away, turn on his heel and put this out of his mind like he does with so many other things that smell too strongly of the past, but he can never seem to leave well enough alone.

“You haven’t told me your name.”

“Bael. Tesvail,” he adds, almost as though he’s thinking better of it but somehow it’s a fate inescapable, and Taliesin reels with it, uncertain of why he hadn’t immediately put two and two together.

“Tesvail,” he repeats. The name is oddly shaped on his tongue; he can’t remember the last time he spoke it aloud. “My mother’s folk.”

“Cousin,” Bael admits. “Distant. No reason you should know me.”

“No,” Taliesin agrees reluctantly, and then adds in a hurry, suddenly wary of being offensive. “But I’d like to. My apologies, I- we weren’t encouraged to ask about that side of the family after my mother… left us.”

“I suppose Celeste was too bitter a pill to swallow,” Bael acknowledges, but bitterly, and the world drops out from under Taliesin’s feet as though gravity has lost its grip on the soles of his boots.

“You- know about my sister?”

“Aye, of course I do, I-” Bael stops suddenly, giving him a hard look. The shock must be evident on his face because Bael’s expression immediately shutters, the shaggy head dipping as he hurries to bustle with his wares. “I’ve said too much.”

“No-  _ please.” _ He’s not proud of the desperation in his voice, nor the sudden hungriness that speaks from some empty place inside his chest. On instinct he reaches out, puts his hand over Bael’s, crushing fabric beneath it. “What can you tell me? Do you know where she is?”

Bael looks at him as if he’s begun to speak in tongues, like nothing of the question makes sense. “Lad - she’s here. Here in Hlath.”


	29. 25 (Part 2)

Bael agrees to meet him for a meal the next day, and Taliesin walks back to the inn in a daze, unsure of exactly how he makes it there. Cort still isn’t back and for once he is grateful, letting himself into their shared room with hands entirely too unsteady, fumbling with the lock and the knob and the lock again, leaning hard against the wall with his forehead pressed to the rough wood like he’ll absorb some of its stillness through his skin and quiet the riot in his skull.

He has so many  _ questions  _ \- his sister, long lost, and here in Hlath the whole time? 

Not  _ lost _ , he corrects himself, gathering the wherewithal to at least pour himself a drink, slamming it down and filling his cup again until the burn in his throat and stomach calms his nerves. One doesn’t just misplace a child like a hat; Celeste had been banished, erased, struck from the annals by his father who  _ to this fucking day _ would not actually admit that he had a daughter for slights committed by his late wife. Real, perceived, it doesn’t matter and he really doesn’t give a fuck, a boy of thirteen again in this moment, wrathful and lonely for a mother who disappeared overnight and was never seen again.

That sounds dramatic. It is a bit dramatic though, the pieces he’s put together over the years as he grew older and wiser and smarter and events grew distant enough that people forgot to guard their tongues so carefully in his presence. Doubting the fidelity of your pregnant wife and banishing her to the countryside with her unborn child, that is a decision that smacks of drama if there ever was one. 

That she died shortly thereafter is what makes this play a tragedy. He’s never known what became of his sister in the aftermath, just that she’d gone to be reared by his mother’s family somewhere far away where his father would never have to look at her, because the moral outrage and the comfort of an abusive, philandering bastard is paramount - at least when he has all the coin.

Hate wells up in him like blood from a pin pricked finger, hot and sour in his throat. He can’t drink anymore or he’ll be drunk and he doesn’t need Cort to come home to him drunk because then he’ll have to  _ explain _ and he doesn’t think he has the words for it. It’s too fresh, like new skin over a wound that hasn’t decided if it will tear open or scar. He could drive himself mad with it and all he really has to do is wait until tomorrow when he can ask all the questions he can think of. He just has to make it through tonight, and everything will be fine.

Only it’s not fine, is it? It hasn’t been fine for years and the alcohol has him tipping into emotional, wanting to cry or scream or break something, anxious and wrathful and impotent with it because what he’d actually like to do is something  _ really _ reasonable, like murder his father and burn his idiotic family tree to the ground.

It’s amazing how much old cuts still bleed. He feels suddenly dirty, an imaginary stickiness all over him, and calls for a bath, dousing himself with water and scrubbing at his skin until it's as raw and tender as he feels on the inside. It helps, a little, sobers him up enough to sit down and shave without slashing his own throat or cutting off a finger, stripping away the dark shadow of growth from his cheeks and chin.

He looks different without it, not boyish exactly but - well, Marv would say  _ prettier _ but he thinks that’s stupid. He just looks more like himself, less like - anyone else. And the mirror doesn’t lie; when he splashes the foam from his face and slicks his wet hair back and forces himself to really  _ look _ , it isn’t his father he sees.

Not that he ever knows what it is that gazes back at him, just tired gray eyes in a face that looks too young for them. He doesn’t like looking at himself like this, never has, and sometimes it surprises him when he does catch sight of his reflection just how little he recognizes. It’s as if he always expects to see the specter of a thin dark haired child looking fearfully back at him, starting at noises and shadows like a rabbit in a farmer’s field, hungry enough to risk being torn apart by dogs.

It's foolish. He's a grown man with a grown man's body, a child no longer to fear shapes in the dark. It's left its marks though, this hard won growth, divots and burns like a tree after a lightning strike. They fade, subsumed by time, but they still alter the pattern of rings at his core; he can try to outgrow them, but they never really go away.

He’s still looking when Cort lets himself into the room and almost doesn't hear, the sounds of his greeting stilled and his boots oddly quiet on the floor, finding Taliesin silent and lost in thought before the mirror. He crosses the small room to stand behind him, his shape outlined beyond Taliesin’s reflection, slightly out of focus in the tarnished silver glass. He doesn't touch him but Taliesin can feel the warmth of the sun radiating off his clothes, the heat of his body doing nothing to make him less ethereal.

“Taliesin?” he asks softly as though he's afraid to startle him, as if he isn't sure Taliesin sees him there.

“How was the armorer?”

“Fine. Slow. Done now.” He hesitates. “Are you-"

“Of course.” He hasn’t even finished the question and Taliesin is already lying, reflexive and instant and so unnecessary. It's like he can't help himself, like it's in his blood.

Cort isn't fooled because Cort is almost never fooled, whether or not he feels it worth the inevitable row to call Taliesin out on it. He weighs his options, watching Taliesin silently, and settles on some unknown answer, leaning forward to ease his arms around Taliesin’s naked waist and press a warm kiss to the top of his shoulder. 

“You shaved.”

“It was overdue.”

“Not that I mind.” He doesn't; for some baffling reason Cort thinks it's seductive, him a touch rough, unkempt. It throws them into sharp relief; Cort's thoughtful, automatic neatness, his own touch of wildness, ever the rogue.

He’s silent for too long, unable to summon an easy bantering return, and wisely Cort says nothing. Taliesin hasn't done well with cleaning up after himself; the liquor is still out on the table, his empty glass next to it, clothing strewn across the end of the bed. He’s vaguely glad he's at least managed a pair of pants, illogically hating the plain evidence of his crimes when he hasn't even bothered to try to hide it. He's too good at hiding to have an easy excuse, resenting the demeaning apathy that dulls his edges, the moods and thoughts that bring it on.

Taliesin turns and winds his arms around Cort’s neck, forces a smile and the courage to look at him for the first time. Cort looks back, quiet and calm like a deep, still pool, mirror bright, and in him Taliesin sees a reflection of a different kind, still difficult to bear.

He starts to duck his head, gaze fleeing of its own accord to find something else to settle on, and Cort catches his chin and pulls him back. It's excruciating, the double sensation of focus sharp like needles and the worn, smooth stone of steady concern, and when he can’t look away he just closes his eyes.

Cort sighs and steps in to pull him close, arms reaching to circle tight around him as though to gather up all of his crumbling pieces and press them back together. He’s too unsettled to cry, and too suddenly tired to try to pretend any of it away. The feel of Cort’s body and his quiet, constant strength is alluring too even if he finds the embrace at first a bit of an unwelcome distraction, like he’s being lifted when all he wants to do is sit in his emotions like a bucket of dirty water and let himself stew.

And he can, for days, the lows sudden and pervasive and greedy with him, jealous of all the moments where he forgets to hate everything about himself. It doesn’t make any sense but it’s just how he is, how he’s always been, his particular pattern of rings. Little wonder that Cort never seems surprised.

“You smell good,” Cort says, just something to say that isn’t really saying anything, gently breaking the silence like he’s pulling cut shapes out of a sheet of glass, softly tapping to shake each piece free.

“I took a bath.”

Cort nods and rubs his cheek against the newly smooth line of Taliesin’s jaw, reaching to place a kiss just below his ear. “Are you tired?”

Always. “A bit.”

“Come to bed with me.”

That makes Taliesin laugh despite himself, though the sound comes out low and muted. “It’s the middle of the afternoon.”

“No matter.” His hands are warm on Taliesin’s skin, the backs of his fingers lightly stroking along his spine, and really it’s just very hard to argue with anything he says. It’s difficult on the best of days anyway, and when he’s like this-

Well. It’s selfish, this desire just to hand himself over entirely to someone else, to lay the responsibility of dealing with his errant feelings and destructive tendencies at someone’s feet like he’s just going to kneel on the floor like a dog and roll over when he’s told to, but it’s better than playing dead until the mood passes. That never seems to work anyway.

They climb into bed like they mean to stay there, shedding shoes and clothing into an untidy pile that he thinks reflects him perfectly, and he sits at the edge of the mattress staring at it until Cort reaches to pull him down across his chest. He smells of metal and smoke and faintly of sweat but Taliesin doesn’t care, curling himself into the space between Cort’s side and outstretched arm, fingers light on the smooth bare skin of his chest.

He loves this body, this man, but sometimes even that feels distant and the guilt is never ending.

They lie there for ages, hours maybe. The sun goes down later and later in the evening and he’s lost all track of time, unable to see anything but a distant glow through the half-parted curtains at the window. Cort just holds him, awake but silent, fingers carding through his hair or caressing over his skin, and still he can’t seem to be at ease, thoughts tumbling over and over like he’s stuck at point break, waves crashing over his head to push him back down again every time he tries to crest the surface.

He should get up. He should sleep. He should do something.

“Bad day?” Cort’s voice is so gentle and he must be worried if he’s even bothering to ask. 

No - that’s not fair; Taliesin doesn’t  _ like  _ for him to ask, because half of the time the answer is  _ no _ and it makes him feel even more broken than usual, having to admit that sometimes there really is nothing wrong when it feels like the world as he knows it is completely over. Cort is the kind of man who can wait - to be asked, to be told, for Taliesin to come to him, but sometimes he still pushes in. It’s almost always for the best and he’s never really wrong to do it, but it’s so hard to balance how Taliesin wants him in every way and still wants to be left alone.

“No,” he says, equally quiet, and for fuck’s sake, he should just tell him. Tell him about Bael and Celeste and his father and anything else that pops into his flighty little head, but he doesn't. He doesn’t even know why. 

“Just… thinking,” he says eventually, because it occurs to him that he’s right on the edge of actually lying (by omission, but still lying) and he feels the overwhelming urge to say  _ something _ .

“About what?”

“About my father.” A half-truth, then. Still, it’s more forthcoming than he usually is, and Cort’s hand goes still where it sits, curled around his shoulder. He doesn’t say anything for an over-stretched moment, waiting to see if Taliesin can be coaxed into sharing anything further. And of course he does, because too much of the time it seems like his mouth bypasses his brain altogether, and he’s just as surprised as anyone else at the things that come flying out of it.

“Do you think I look like him?”

“In what manner?”

“In the traditional manner,” he says, instantly annoyed at Cort’s caution and trying to tamp down the urge to snap and snarl. Thank the gods Cort doesn’t try to look at him, he doesn’t think he can bear it.

“There is a resemblance, yes.”

_ Fuck _ , why has he asked this? That just makes him want to die, curl up and wither away like a worm crawled too far up the pavement, dried out and brittle. 

“But,” Cort forestalls, before Taliesin manages to explode and say a half dozen things he’ll instantly regret. “If you mean do I see  _ him _ when I look at  _ you _ , the answer is no.” Cort shifts onto his side to look at him, blue eyes serious and achingly earnest, like he's being truthful instead of placating as he says all the things Taliesin longs to hear. “You are not your father.”

That is - something. Taliesin takes a slow breath and it shakes on the way in, a jittering feeling in his chest like wind against feathers. “You don’t think I’m like him?”

He keeps asking for answers he doesn’t want to hear to questions he doesn’t want to think about, but Cort lifts one shoulder in a shrug and takes him at his word. “You can be ruthless too. You know when to go for the throat. He doesn’t have your compassion though. He can’t be flexible.”

He could make an innuendo of that so easily but he doesn’t have the energy for it, and reaches out instead, flattening his hand against the center of Cort’s chest to feel the quiet pulse of his heart. It’s a soft and sentimental thing but so, he supposes, is compassion. “We never were encouraged to be particularly empathetic.”

The look Cort gives him implies that he’s understating things. They don’t say anything else for a long while, him with his hand against Cort’s heart and Cort softly stroking a thumb over his shoulder.

“Do you remember when he gave me that scar?” he asks quietly and Cort’s hand stills halfway through its motion, fingers on the faded silver stripe that cuts across Taliesin’s shoulder, a long-healed indentation in his flesh. He always kisses Taliesin there when he’s in a mood; Taliesin wonders if he knows that. 

Not that he wants to say anything about it now that he’s brought up something like this, a dark moment for them both. His mind swims with unwanted images; a sack of kittens drowned in a fountain and his own flying fists at his brother’s face; his father’s thunderous expression and a horsewhip in his hand, furious at being embarrassed by his hysterical child in front of guests.

He’d beaten Taliesin bloody over it right there in the courtyard, but the only blow to scar had been the last, landing across the bone in his thin shoulder as Dorhal’s arm tired and his aim grew erratic. Cort was there, had watched it happen. From the suddenly sharp look in his eyes, Taliesin knows he remembers. It was… memorable.

“That was a hard year for you.” 

He really doesn’t know what else he expected Cort to say, but it twists like a thorned vine around his heart anyway, still humiliated by his helplessness even after all this time. He looks away, ready to sink back under the water inside his little well of silence, but Cort surprises him, leaning into brush his lips over his shoulder. Maybe he does know.

“I never knew what to do,” he confesses, quiet and honest and shattering. “About you.  _ For _ you. You never would back down from anything, and you just kept putting your foot in it. I’m not saying you were wrong,” he adds pointedly, one of his dark brows lifting before they both draw together, the familiar line forming between them. “I just never knew how to protect you the right way. In a way that wasn’t just to tell you to stop.”

There is an obvious regret in his voice that makes Taliesin’s heart ache, pressing his hand harder into Cort’s chest like he’ll reach into the past and gather up both of their young souls to hold them dear.

“You were a child. It wasn’t up to you to protect me.”

“You didn’t have anyone else.”

The truth of that is pitiful, crawling all over him with feet prickling with shame. When his mother died he lost the one person who had ever made his childish heart feel a little bit loved - not safe necessarily, but at least  _ loved  _ \- and he’d handled it about as well as a trapped and angry snake shaken around the inside of a box. But the idea that Cort had ever felt  _ obligated _ to him rankles deep, and he tries to dismiss it even as his traitor mind makes the suggestion. It still hurts, but it hurts like the past and that he can bury.

“You taught me to fight back, though. Properly. You and your father.”

Cort makes another little shrug of assent, but his expression is still so dark that suddenly it occurs to Taliesin that he must spend as much time regretting things he hasn't done as Taliesin wastes rueing the idiotic rubbish he actually does do. The thought softens him immediately and he reaches up to curl his hand around the back of Cort’s neck, drawing him down for a gentle kiss that lasts and lingers.

When he finally pulls away, Cort is watching him curiously. “What was that for?”

“Because I love you. Because I’m glad you’re here, even though I’m terrible company. Because I don’t really want to go out anywhere tonight, but I’m still probably going to be awful to live with anyway.”

At that Cort just snorts, rolling his eyes and turning over onto his back. “I can think of worse things than dealing with you in one of your moods.”

“Wouldn’t you rather go without me?”

Cort sighs like he shouldn’t have to dignify that with a response. “Of course not. You don’t always have to be entertaining, and anyway - it wouldn’t be any fun without you. Besides,” he says, before Taliesin can object, pulling him down to lie again across his chest. “I’d rather be here with you throwing things at my head than unsupervised with Marv and a bottle of liquor.”

He actually manages a smile at the image, mollified despite himself and, as always, hopelessly, perilously grateful. 

“That’s fair. Are you sure though?”

“Yes, Taliesin. I'm not going anywhere.”

He leaves it at that.


	30. 25 (Part 3) Mildly NSFW

There is a part of him that doubts that Bael will show, but he does and that's enough for him to be able to put aside the way the man - his cousin he supposes, however distant - looks so uncomfortable.

They eat and they walk and they talk, hashing over years of history. Taliesin finds himself without much to impart; for all that his life at sea has been exciting in its moments, it’s still soldier's work - long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of absolute terror, all of which makes Bael shake his head. He's not used to spending this kind of time with people who don't deal in vice or violence; it makes him feel strangely like a ruffian though his job is perfectly legitimate.

Not that he can fault Bael for his discomfort, nor even his vague disgust. With what he's learned to expect from Taliesin’s family, it makes an unfortunate sense.

“I hope you can forgive me for… hesitating. When we met,” Bael says eventually, leaning on the wall overlooking part of the harbor. His sleeves are rolled up to the elbow again, arms brown and hardy beneath a layer of golden hair.

“You didn't know me.” He still doesn't really, but at least they are no longer quite the strangers they were.

Bael takes that for the easy out it is and shrugs, scratches his scruffy chin. “I'm not - a brave man, Taliesin. I'm not keen to cross your father.”

“How would that be?” he asks, and Bael looks at him like he's being naive.

“He's the only reason we can afford to keep Celeste in even the small amount of comfort she's in. Without the money - we would struggle.”

Money. Fucking  _ money _ , it always comes back to that, and even his own instinct is to think maybe he's being shaken down for coin until it occurs to him how ridiculous that sounds. But it's also a relatable situation; his family, his and Cort's, is also the reason  _ they _ are comfortable, funds made available to draw if he feels so inclined. He's never given much thought to the privilege, intentionally so, reticent to take anything from his father except for when it feels like gloating, funding his antics and his happiness with Ferryman gold. Not that he hasn't earned it, but-

Anyway, that's just like his father, maintaining an asset he cares nothing for on the chance that some future use might arise where he can capitalize on his investment.

It's not so different from how he deals with Taliesin.  _ Fuck _ .

“Well you needn't worry about my saying anything,” he tries to reassure when he realizes he's gone quiet and that Bael is waiting for some kind of acknowledgement of what he's said. “I doubt he gives half a shit about anything I think, and anyway, we don't speak. But even if we did, I would never put your family in jeopardy. It's my family too.”

Bael seems to take him at his word, nodding in some sort of acceptance once he's thought it over. “Fair enough, lad.”

“Will you tell me about her?” The question comes out breathless, suddenly aware again of all the tendrils of anxiety winding through him as though they are the young shoots of an invasive vine he's ignored until they’ve grown to choke a tree.

“You don’t want to meet her?”

“I- is that-” Does he?  _ Yes _ , he thinks immediately. Of course he does, how could he not? Celeste has always been a missing piece of the fragmented puzzle of his life, a lingering unexplored mystery. 

In all likelihood she’s not the answer to every question he has; if his father’s brusque explanation and his own internal timeline is correct she was just a babe when their mother died. She wouldn’t know if Flara had missed him, spoken of him, loved him at the end. He may never know. He needs to make it unimportant though, because short of summoning the dead there’s nothing he can actually do to ever find out, but- is it enough, even without that?

Yes, he thinks. He isn’t sure what it would be like to have a sister, someone younger than him to look out for, to look after, but there’s something compelling enough in the thought to make him feel reckless and stupid and very much like his normal self again, moving on instinct without regard for sense.

Only it also turns out he’s scared to death and backpedals as fast as he tries to sprint forward. 

Once he’s slept on it he wakes up realizing how mad it is, how he’s been focusing on the wrong thing, so selfishly concerned about shattering his own ridiculous fantasies with a disappointing reality that he’s forgotten what kind of a person  _ he  _ actually is. He, himself, Dorhal Ferryman’s most insignificant son, still the mirror of his face and an extension, even far removed, of his will. He doesn’t have anything to offer a twelve year old girl that she couldn’t get from Bael, who loves her and has cared for her all these years. 

That she may be best left free of the Ferryman curse entirely is a thought that occurs to him more than once, curling an anxious noose around his throat tight enough to strangle, and it’s that thought that makes him reconsider.

Bael brings her to the marketplace just like he said he would, and it’s not so unusual a thing that Celeste seems to take it amiss. She’s got a fair head for business Bael tells him and he can see that from afar, lurking against a shop wall some distance away and just observing, telling himself that he’s only working up the courage. Bael shoots him a glance now and again, clearly waiting for Taliesin to make some kind of gesture, but even the thought of making his feet move, even just to walk over there, dries out his throat and makes him feel like he’s going to shrivel into dust and blow away into the sky.

It’s not well done and in the end he rabbits away while Bael isn’t looking, disappearing out of view down an alley before he can think twice about it. His panicked feet carry him halfway across the city before he manages to get control of himself, ending up in a random park that might actually be the garden estate of some rich asshole with more space in the city than he can use.

Now he’s just projecting, but it gives him something different to be angry about, pacing for a little while beneath the trees until he feels the hysteria recede, leaving him drained and empty and almost too tired to make it back home. That’s a problem of a different kind, finding Cort sitting at the table waiting on him, digging a hole through its worn wooden surface with the end of a teaspoon and fixing him with a look entirely too uneasy as he all but falls through the door.

Right. Because he still hasn’t told Cort anything, and him disappearing in one of his moods is a general cause for alarm. Nevermind that he feels better today, managing to wolf down breakfast and put on clean clothing and make some half-decent excuse for himself before disappearing off into the city.

“I’m fine,” he says, trying to head off the worst of it, aware he’s fluttering and erratic and trying to pass that off as normal. His kind of normal. “I just got distracted.”

“Don’t make me worry about you, Ferryman,” Cort demands icily, his blue eyes cool even as Taliesin slides into his lap, straddling his thighs with his back pressed against the edge of the table. He unbends enough to take Taliesin by the hips, tugging him closer until they’re flush and he can slide his hands up Taliesin’s spine like he’s checking for stab wounds.

“I won’t,” Taliesin promises, acquiescent and forcibly playful, demanding attention like some kind of naughty pet, channeling all of his nervous energy into making that frosty look melt. It doesn’t take much; he’s cheating, capitalizing on Cort’s relief at his well-being and the belief that his low mood has dissipated to drag him into something diverting and tawdry.

Not that he doesn’t want Cort, that part isn’t a lie. It’s just that he doesn’t want to answer any questions until he sorts himself out on his own. He can be very, very distracting when he wants to be, trotting out his internal catalog of dirty tricks, willing to give voice to a lowly spoken stream of salacious filth so over the top ridiculous that Cort scrapes the chair back from the table, throws him down on their bed and has him before he can actually make good on anything he’s promised.

He lies there afterward like his orgasm has melted all of his bones, but his mind is clearer now that exertion has bled off most of the haze left over from his panic. He’s savvy enough at least to notice that Cort, despite his eagerness and what is probably a terminal willingness to play along with Taliesin’s whims, is still creased around the edges, the corners of his eyes, his mouth, his hands still purposefully gentle when they touch him. He’s not entirely convinced, but then Cort takes seven hundred years to get fully on board with most things, and if Taliesin can just keep a neutral face for a little longer he can smooth the issue and no one will ever be the wiser.

It isn’t until they’re walking back from dinner that he realizes he’s not even sure what issue it is that he’s trying to smooth, or why exactly he seems to be so set on Cort not finding out about what he’s doing.

Maybe it’s because it feels a bit like playing with fire. His past is a box at the bottom of a river with a lock just waiting to rust through, and it feels stupid to go purposefully digging it out of the mud. He also is just stupid in general, and now that he’s some hours removed he can’t believe he actually ran away, a grown man cowering from the regard of a twelve year old girl.

Maybe  _ grown man _ is being generous, but he’s fairly certain that nothing about the situation earlier today was actually life threatening, no matter what it happened to feel like at the time.

He’ll just have to try again. And again. And maybe again. Keep poking away at a thing of curiosity until something happens, because it really might be treasure this time if he can just get past his own internal flotsam to see the thing done.

Taliesin falls asleep thinking about what he ought to do, and doesn’t notice that Cort has said about as much tonight as he has - almost nothing. 


	31. 25 (Part 4)

The next day Celeste walks straight up to him in the marketplace and offers him an apple, evaporating all of his careful planning into sea mist and warm air.

She’s a little thing, thin and wispy, standing no higher than the center of his chest, but she regards him with calm gray eyes - his eyes, their father’s eyes - in a way that makes him think of Cort, like she’s patiently waiting for him to finish vibrating out of his skin so they can get on with having a proper conversation.

It makes Taliesin laugh, the sound bubbling up his chest, into his throat, and out of his mouth like it’s a physical thing leaving his body and taking half of his madness along with it.

“Hi.”

“Hello,” she returns gravely, waiting for him to accept the proffered apple before she sticks her arm out in a decidedly unladylike fashion to shake his hand. “Celeste Tesvail.”

“Taliesin Ferryman,” he answers back and takes her hand, illogically charmed. She looks so serious, the jut of her little pointed chin giving her a stubborn air, and he can’t help but be completely taken in by it.

“I’m told you’re my brother.”

That brings him back to reality, blinking as he lets loose of her hand. “So it would seem.”

“I’ve never had a brother,” she informs him, matter of fact and calmly speculative, interested eyes on his face. She reminds him of Jorran, her manner so unexpectedly mature that he almost responds with his customary sarcasm to tell her how lucky she’s been.

No, that won’t do. “I’ve never had a sister,” he says instead, and watches her nod as though in approval that they’ve already found a common ground.

“Do you want to see my scarves?” she asks, the sudden change in topic catching him off guard, making him blink stupidly. “My arms aren’t long enough to use the big loom yet, but Margaret says my scarves are nice.”

When he doesn’t immediately respond she frowns, the jut of her chin becoming more pronounced. “I can do ribbons too.”

_ Fuck, _ how do you talk to children? Especially little grown up children defensive of their apparent tradesmanship. “Show me your ribbons,” he says a bit desperately, and is rewarded with a bright smile that lights up the entire street, charmed again when she takes his arm and pulls him into the thoroughfare. “Maybe I can- braid one into your hair?”

“You can braid?” she says in wonderment. “But you’re a  _ boy.” _

“I’m a sailor,” he explains, not entirely sure why his voice pitches up at the end of the phrase like he’s asking a question. It doesn’t seem to matter though, because Celeste latches onto the topic like a crab with a minnow in its pincers.

“Is your ship big? Can you climb all the ropes to the top? Is it scary when there’s a storm? Have you ever seen a kraken? Tell me  _ everything.” _

When he looks up it’s to see Bael laughing, a rolling belly laugh but completely silent, like he doesn’t want Celeste to catch him at it. Their eyes meet and Taliesin grins, already knowing the expression is star struck, helplessly and hopelessly entertained, all his fears for nothing. He ends the day with a ribbon tied in a bow around his bicep, and another winding its way around his heart.


	32. 25 (Part 5) Mildly NSFW

He spends every minute with Celeste that he can spare, helping out in the market. It'll be a cold day in Thay when a Ferryman can't move a product, and he is both chagrined and proud when he catches Celeste observing him and testing out some of his tactics. His hot-eyed smoldering flirtation won't work for her and he is  _ so  _ relieved that she doesn't even try, but she hits her stride selling romance to the romantic, and between the two of them they create an elaborate fiction about how Celeste’s ribbons spawned an epic love story that sounds a lot like something to come out of a novel.

Their customers eat it up, and the overtly smug look his sister has on her face at the end of the day when her little apron jingles with coin makes him irascibly pleased.

It makes his bones with Bael, he supposes, and he is invited back to their little house on the poorer edge of the market district for dinner and to meet Margaret, Bael’s elderly mother. She's sharp, asks a lot of questions, but he's as polite and charming as he can manage without making an ass of himself, as considerate as if he's dealing with his grandmother (which he's never, but that's the image he tries to conjure) and eventually she seems to decide to tolerate him.

Taliesin comes by every day after that, brings flowers, buys groceries, and time surges by him in the blink of an eye.

He’s about a week into it when he realizes that he still hasn’t told Cort - and more than that, that he hasn’t even begun thinking of  _ how  _ to tell Cort.

This feels… complicated. He hasn’t exactly been lying, but - no, that’s a lie too, he’s  _ definitely _ been lying, or at least he knows that’s how Cort will see it, left on the outside looking in. He’ll be upset on that account alone and Taliesin can’t even really blame him; he’s been completely absent for most of a week, in body during the day and in mind at night, and Cort has weathered it all in silence that seems to get a little deeper with every passing hour.

But they’re still doing all the things that they were doing - physically at least, Taliesin’s attempt at normalcy somehow manifesting in a sudden uptick in being demonstrative and affectionate. Maybe he thinks that if Cort is kissing him, he’s not asking him questions; it seems underhanded, plainly manipulative, and he feels his stomach twist over it every time Cort looks at him with concern he doesn’t voice, careful and gentle because he thinks the bullshit story Taliesin has spun him is actually true.

He’s fine. He just needs some space. He’s not hiding a brand new family  _ at all. _

That’s the other part of it, he supposes. Even more than his own guilty omissions. He doesn’t think Cort will approve.

No, he  _ knows  _ Cort won’t approve, because Cort never approves of his mad schemes. Taliesin suddenly has a sister after twelve years of wondering if she ever truly existed at all, and not only is she not particularly terrible, she’s sweet and brilliant and near at hand and he might even be able to make her love him a little bit, and honestly what  _ isn’t  _ mad about that?

It feels risky and it fills his mouth with sand, drying out his tongue every time he thinks about trying to explain it to Cort. To put words to how fast it happened, how it made him feel, how much he suddenly cares. He can’t even really explain it to himself, not in a way that doesn’t make him sound desperately, despondently lonely, and he isn't that either. Not quite. 

Taliesin leans back against the headboard of their bed and watches Cort wander across the room to pour a glass of water. His breeches are slung low on his hips, barely done up the front, shirt hanging over one of the chairs at the table where it ended up when Taliesin had taken it off of him, in a rush to get from the door to the bed, another pointless subterfuge.

This isn’t going to last, eventually it’s all going to blow up in his face, but all he wants to do right now is enjoy the moment. Enjoy his sister, enjoy his lover, enjoy his freedom and the space he has to breathe where he feels like nothing can touch him.

Water sparkles off Cort’s bare skin where droplets splash, dripping from the edge of his glass when he drinks too fast. They catch the fading sunlight like prisms, refracting endlessly and Taliesin leans forward to watch them slide down the hard contours of his chest, dip into the rigid cut of his abdomen.

Cort watches him watching, turns toward him to let him look. He’s picking up all of Taliesin’s bad habits, has learned how to pose without posing, and even though the look on his face says he doesn’t take any of it seriously it still evokes a rather serious response, gravity dragging Taliesin down to the edge of the mattress on his hands and knees.

Cort upends the last of the water in his glass over his head like it's the hottest day of summer and he’s desperate to cool off, heedless of how it spatters across the floor, across the end of their bed, over Taliesin’s forearms as he reaches out and drags Cort closer by the waistband of his pants. It drips from the ends of Cort’s hair as Taliesin gathers his hands into it and slides cool across his fingers, trickles off his elbows and into their sheets, and they topple backward into the pillows in a sprawl of wet flesh and thirsty mouths.

_ More, please,  _ and  _ harder  _ are the only things of note that Taliesin manages to say that night. And the one after. And the one after that.

“Is everything alright?” Cort asks him, the evening before everything goes straight to hell. They’re lying on their backs pointed the wrong way on their bed, watching the wind billow the thin curtains out into arcs like sails on open water. He fancies he can hear the harbor bells from here, chiming in the distance; it’s probably only wishful thinking, still wistful for the open water.

It takes him too long to answer and Cort shifts over, turning on his side to look down into Taliesin’s face, propped above him. He’s so heart wrenchingly beautiful and Taliesin loves him so much, and suddenly the truth is right there on the tip of his tongue. All he has to do is open his mouth and let it out, fall into those steady blue eyes with all their earnestness and concern, let them catch him, swallow him whole.

“You know that you can tell me,” Cort says, his fingers moving to cup Taliesin’s cheek, ghosting over his chin, his mouth. “If there was ever anything. If you- needed something. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know,” he says and smiles automatically, because it’s an unnecessary reminder but it’s also very sweet, and from someone as reserved as Cort is, even now, even with him, sweetness is to be cherished. It isn’t until he kisses Cort’s fingertips and turns to wrap himself in his arms, back to his chest, that he realizes what he should have said.

“I love you,” he says instead, but the words feel suddenly leaden in his mouth.

That’s where the downhill slide begins, with _ love _ like a condolence on his lips and a missed opportunity to come clean. Cort holds him and doesn’t ask again, but something changes and there’s a little bit less to say as the second week drags on. He catches Cort watching him out of the corner of his eye, looking away whenever he turns his head, and he deludes himself into believing that the suspicion he sees is still just oblivious concern until he comes home to find Cort spinning a bruised-looking apple across the battered table like a top, sacrificing bits of its shiny red flesh to the weathered and splintering wood.

“Did you have a nice day?” Cort asks as he comes in, puts his bag down, and it’s said with such forceful politeness that it fixes his feet to the floor. Cort’s expression is excessively neutral but his eyes are frigidly cold and Taliesin freezes, caught like a rabbit in a snare.

Shit.  _ Shit. _

“Yes...” he stalls, fingers light on the back of his chair as he considers his next move. Cort is upset with him, he can feel the rolling current of his anger like an undertow that erodes away the shore, and if he doesn’t move quickly he’ll be chest deep in it before he can blink. “I went to-”

“Are you hungry? Want an apple?”

Taliesin’s eyes flick to the apple under Cort’s hand, his fingers white-knuckle tight over its scarred surface. “I think you’ve rather gotten the best of that one,” he says, and he’s trying to be funny because he’s a  _ moron _ . It’s not even a proper joke, but he might as well not have spoken at all. Cort taps the apple against the tabletop and a bit of pulp goes flying, seeping juice into the dry wood.

“How about some ribbon instead, or are you all full up on that too.”

Oh fuck, he fucking knows. He  _ knows. _

_ Fuck. _

His mind spirals out of control for a very long three seconds where it immediately conjures up an image of Cort throwing the apple at his head followed closely by both chair and table and his own grim death folded in half and pitched out the window like a pair of torn trousers no one wants, before reality reinstates itself with a crunch like bones breaking under falling stones.

“What are you talking about?” He sounds so smooth, almost nonchalant, like he honestly can’t imagine what is wrong. It comes out so easily it surprises him, like he’s been practicing. Might as well be sure about what he’s in trouble for, he reasons; no sense in confessing to a crime before he’s accused.

Right.

“Is that a joke? Are you- joking?” 

That’s all it really takes to make him hate himself. Gods- what is  _ wrong _ with him, why can’t he just have normal fucking conversations like a normal fucking person, why does he always have to be  _ clever? _

_ Of course _ Cort knows. It’s  _ Cort _ . Any forbearance Taliesin has received in this matter is due entirely to his patience and not because he’s an idiot who can’t just  _ find things out _ .

Suddenly everything seems very clear, and very stupid. He almost can’t make sense of his own logic, has no idea how he ever thought that putting off an argument would lead anywhere but to this exact moment, with him facing down that ice cold displeasure from a position of being a thousand percent in the wrong and also an untrustworthy fuck to boot.

“I was going to tell you.” It’s exactly the wrong thing to say. He knows it as soon as it’s out of his mouth, knows how cheap and useless it sounds.

“You should have. You had every opportunity while I sat here like a fool,  _ worried _ about you, waiting for you to tell me what the fuck was wrong like all you needed was a little bit of  _ space-” _

He is  _ furious _ . It’s not like Cort never loses his temper - he lives with Taliesin, that itself is enough to drive anyone to shouting - but he holds himself so close, so tightly, that sometimes Taliesin forgets its not all carefulness and self-control. That sometimes stones shake beneath the earth hard enough to bring a hillside down.

“I had to  _ follow _ you. Like a thief, like a fucking  _ spy _ .” Cort stalks toward him and he doesn’t even think to move until he can’t, close enough to see the blue of Cort’s eyes shimmering with ice and accusations. “Do you have any idea what that was like? What that made me feel like? Wondering what I would find you stumbling into, what you’d gotten yourself caught up in this time-”

“I’m not fucking helpless, you know.”

“Says the man with zero sense of self-preservation.”

He squares his shoulders at that, waspish annoyance rising to dull the pervasive sense of shame. “Right, and you thought what, skulking around the city - that you’d find me fucking someone else?”

Cort stiffens, back going ramrod straight, and the mean little voice in Taliesin’s ear gloats, congratulating him on landing a hit. 

“That’s  _ exactly  _ what you thought, isn’t it.”

“Stop it, Taliesin.”

“You thought you’d trip over me on my knees, sucking a cock in some alley.” It’s a low blow and he only says it because it’s probably true and Cort’s lack of trust in him makes him hypocritically furious, wanting to hit back, unable to back down.

Cort glares at him, less hurt than he imagined. “If only that were the case. Then I could just fucking  _ kill  _ that person and we could move on with this idiocy.”

That pulls him up short, not expecting the brusque response or how brutal the implication is. It sounds like something  _ he _ would say in a fit of temper, and to hear a threat like that out of Cort’s mouth is both a bit horrifying and a bit - well, a bit arousing honestly, and he doesn’t need anger  _ and _ arousal both clouding his already cloudy judgement.

And either way, Cort isn’t done, still berating him in that tight, clenched down voice. “But since you've apparently decided it’s a good idea to try and bring your father down on all of our heads-”

“That’s why I didn’t fucking tell you!” he shouts, finally caving into the urge to raise his voice. It echos oddly in the small space, rebounding off the walls. “I didn't know  _ how  _ to tell you!”

“Oh bullshit.”

“You wouldn't have approved!”

“I don't approve.” Cort agrees, and somehow his voice is steady and even again, as calm as Taliesin isn’t. “Why should I? Associating with them invites trouble. It’s  _ dangerous, _ Taliesin, and you don't even see it.”

Only he does, and it's nothing he wants to spend any time looking at, avoiding this bald truth like he does his reflection in the mirror. He just wants this, wants to have this, wants to explore it, wants to close chapters and start new ones and maybe feel for once like he has some kind of connection to his blood that doesn’t feel like a leash in someone’s fist.

Why does that have to be so fucking  _ difficult? _ He also wants to break something, tear something apart, make something shatter. Why not his whole life then, if it's going to insist on such extremes? He can do that too, be extreme.

“I thought you liked that about me.” Cort gives him a warning look, and he should just stop, but he can't now, already in motion. 

“Taliesin-”

“You like when I'm reckless. Admit it - you  _ like  _ being worried about me and you  _ like _ my mess, because it means you get to clean things up. You get to be the one to  _ fix _ things.”

Of course it’s fucking true and they both know it, it’s just never been said aloud. Cort reels visibly but he doesn't stop, hitting his stride. He gets right up in Cort's space, close enough that he can feel tension humming between them like a charge in the air after a lightning strike.

“You do like being in control, don't you?” He asks lowly, voice soft like smoke. Cort is uncannily still, but his eyes are on Taliesin’s lips when he speaks and he thinks if he were to touch him, he would find Cort shaken. “Dictate what happens, how it happens, when it happens. Define the parameters of things, make all the rules, make me say  _ please _ .”

He always does know where to dig his fingers in. That pressure point gives, snapping like a dead limb off an overburdened tree, and he's ready when Cort reaches for him, crushing their mouths together and fingers rough in his hair. Its hard and fast and violent, lips and hands bruising, and he's turned about and shoved up against the table so suddenly it nearly takes the wind out of him. It's hard and it hurts and it's perfect-

And then its over as Cort jerks himself back, turning loose of Taliesin like the feel of him burns his skin. Taliesin won't let him go, stepping after him to kiss him again, a house fire moving unchecked from room to room.

Cort grips his arms, pushes him away with a little snap. “Stop.”

“Tell me the truth.” He could burn them both alive, let all of this go up in flames.

“Fucking- damn it Taliesin, I said  _ stop _ .” 

He does, rocking on his heel, the table edge solid at his back. No retreating. “Who's the fucking liar now, Cort.” 

“Really?  _ Fine. _ Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m just a control freak who feels some insane need to make sure you’re safe at night, you ungracious fuck. What does that make you? You don’t want to deal with your fucking problems, you just want to fuck me and pretend that makes them go away.”

“Oh what the f-”

“You can yank me around by the cock like a pet on a leash, that's your fucking prerogative, but don't confuse it for something its not. It's cruel, and it doesn’t fucking fix anything.”

Cruel? He's never thought of himself as cruel before. Cruel is a word for other people, something of his brothers, his father. Taliesin has never felt strong or safe enough to be cruel - until maybe now.

That makes him want to disappear, fully aware of how awful he’s being. He’s not ready to face it though, pushes that knowledge away, holds it under like something he’s trying to drown. “Well you  _ are  _ the expert at fixing things, I guess you would know.”

Cort doesn’t respond to the jab with anything more than a weary look and a suppressed sigh, annoyed like Taliesin is just being ridiculous. “Apparently I should have. Had I anticipated that you would just fucking summon Tesvails to you like a lighthouse beacon, I would have never let you out of my sight in the first place.”

“Wait.  _ Wait. _ ” Taliesin turns on him slowly, pieces falling into place like flakes of ash raining from the sky to form a solid blanket on the earth. “What are you saying?”

Immediately Cort's gaze shutters, blue eyes going steely with discomfort as Taliesin rounds on him. 

“Do you mean to say that you  _ knew?” _

“Knew what?” he deflects, tries to, but Cort has never been a strong liar when the stakes are high and the chips are down, and he can barely hold Taliesin’s gaze, back straightening reflexively when Taliesin purposefully invades his space.

That's all the confirmation he needs. “You motherfucker, you knew the whole time didn't you? You knew she was here.”

Cort can't even answer him, a twitch at the corner of his jaw, a guilty red flush creeping from chest to cheekbones, and Taliesin-

He will never,  _ never  _ lay hands on someone he loves in anger. Unfortunately that doesn't make the urge to punch Cort in his idiot mouth any less substantial. He steps away instead, puts some distance between them.

“It's true, isn't it,” he demands flatly when no answer is forthcoming. Cort takes a slow, deep breath, stalling for time or maybe simply unwilling to deliver an answer, and Taliesin snatches up a shirt lying over the end of the bed and throws it at him.

“You complete  _ asshole.” _

“Taliesin-"

“How could you  _ do  _ that? How could you just - keep that from me?”

Cort looks at him like he isn't making sense. “You never wanted to know anything about your father, how was I to know-"

“And would you have told me? If I'd asked?”

Cort hesitates, which is answer enough.

“Why?  _ Why?  _ Why would you hide something like this from me? She's my fucking  _ sister _ , she's a  _ child _ , not some political chess piece to move around to please my fucking father.”

“You say that like I have any more say in fucking Ferryman machinations than you do.”

“No? Why  _ do _ you know then?”

Cort shifts awkwardly, just a quiet transference of weight from foot to foot. “My father was responsible for relocating her. They… would talk. In front of me. Your father and mine.”

That just fucking figures. “He knows where Raghnall loyalties lie.”

Cort stares at him, dark brows drawn together. The expression is hard to read, like a door slamming shut; the light in his eyes flickers and dims, like a cloud passing over the sun.

It makes Taliesin shiver.

The silence is tense and fraught and eventually he just looks away. 

“Taliesin-”

“I don’t want to fucking talk about it anymore,” he snaps, and Cort folds his arms across his chest.

“Ignoring your father isn’t going to make him go away.”

“It's not about  _ him,  _ why can't you fucking understand-" he chokes himself off, throwing his hands up and bringing them down with frustrated force, slapping against his sides. It's not like he's doing a remotely adequate job of expressing himself either, wanting to shout or throw things like a toddler having a tantrum. “Whatever. Fuck it.”

Cort stops, going still and silent, and Taliesin can almost feel him trying to reason it out. Cort isn’t stupid, not by any means, but they just don’t look at things the same way. They never have and sometimes it complements, Cort’s steady reasonableness and his own maneuverability, realism and idealism tempering each other out into something better. But other times they’re just speaking two different languages and he can scream as loud as he wants to and still never make himself understood.

“You feel like I lied to you. By not telling you.”

“Yeah.”

“Bit ironic though, isn't it?” He doesn't even  _ sound  _ angry anymore and it just gets under Taliesin’s skin. 

“I'm not a fucking  _ child  _ Cort,” he snaps back, turning around to shoot him a glare. Cort almost looks surprised, like they've been done with this for ages and Taliesin has brought it up out of nowhere. He covers over the look quickly though and it makes Taliesin feel  _ crazy,  _ like he's imagining things, seeing monsters in the shadows where there are none.

“I know you're not a child,” Cort says carefully, exactly like he's trying to figure out how to best parent this situation.

“You spend enough time fucking me, I'd hope so.”

“Taliesin!” Cort looks horrified, like he's appalled that he would even say such a thing and it makes his mouth run wild.

“But that's how it is, right? You can put your dick down my throat, bend me over and screw me twelve ways from Tuesday, I'm mature enough for that. Just not enough to make my own decisions or know what I really want. I'm surprised you don't fucking dress me in the morning.”

“That is  _ not  _ fair-"

“Oh come off it, don't pretend that's not exactly how it is. Poor fucked up Taliesin,” he mimics, his voice going high in a spite-filled impression. “Too dumb and pretty to have any sense. Better make sure he doesn't do something  _ untoward _ , what will the neighbors say.”

“Don't be so fucking dramatic.”

Unexpectedly that stings.  _ A lot. _

“Dramatic?” he repeats, world narrowing around the word. That- it- he's not going to cry, he's  _ not _ , that would just be-

He’s always been too  _ something _ , too impulsive, too needy, too sensitive, and even though he deserves absolutely no patience and understanding at this point, he still wants it anyway. Doesn’t want Cort to be yet another person who thinks he should change.

He swallows hard, grits his teeth, but Cort doesn't seem to notice, still speaking in that cautious, measured tone of voice like he’s trying to talk someone off a ledge. Illogically it makes Taliesin want to find one.

He isn’t even sure  _ why _ , it’s just suddenly all a bit much, and-

There must have been some question he hasn’t answered, some magically correct response he didn’t give, because Cort crosses the room to him. “I just want to protect you, Taliesin.”

He doesn’t really need context; it still just makes him feel like shit. “You can’t protect me from my own life.”

Cort reaches for him and then frowns when Taliesin pulls away, leaning out of reach until gravity carries him back a step. That expression is shuttered quickly too, cast into a carefully neutral line. It makes his insides twist but he can’t focus on that now, the room too small and warm, sweat prickling his back like sharp little spiders’ legs at the way he suddenly feels cornered.

“Taliesin?”

“I’m fine.” Cort isn’t buying it at all, frozen with his hand out like Taliesin might just come to him like a disobedient pet if he waits patiently enough. He’s probably not wrong and it’s something Taliesin just can’t face, overwhelmed and with this clawing feeling in the back of his throat. He turns away, squeezes himself between Cort and the table and heads toward the door. “I said it’s fine. I just need some air.”

“You’re- going?”

“I just-”  _ Do not cry, don’t you fucking dare. _ “Just need to take a walk.”

“Don’t go,” he starts, the tone of his voice completely changed, but Taliesin can’t be gone quick enough, slipping out the door like sand through fingers. “Please?” he thinks he hears as it shuts behind him, and that’s just-

It’s too much and as he stalks down the hall he’s already in tears, blowing down the stairs and out the front door like he’s running from a fire. When he hits the street he takes off at a sprint, blind panic, random direction, because he’s always been fast where Cort is strong, and there’s no chance that he’ll catch him if he has a head start.

Maybe that’s why Cort always seems like he’s trying to get out in front of things, but he doesn’t want to think about that right now, just wants to hide somewhere that nobody will find him, curl up smaller and smaller until he disappears.

He ends up at the harbor, because of course he does. He’s stopped fucking crying by the time he can hear the sea but he feels a wreck, dragging the sleeve of his shirt over his face and his hands through his hair. He walks for ages, down each pier and back, what seems like miles and miles without really covering any great distance. Eventually he posts up in a spot near where the  _ Star Shark  _ is berthed, her rigging all torn down for repair, and stares at the sharp toothed maw of the figurehead until he can barely see it for the darkness.

The sun’s gone down and he hasn’t even noticed - doesn’t notice much of anything, until a figure whistling a familiar tune rolls jauntily along the planks toward him like he’s out for an evening stroll.

“What are you doing, Marv.”

“Just looking for you.”

“Cort put you up to this?”

Marv doesn’t dignify that with a real response, just harrumphs and sits down next to Taliesin on the ground, hikes his knees up to his chest and digs out his pipe like he’s prepared to settle in for a good long while. “He knows you pretty well, huh. Just where he said you’d be.”

That makes him feel like shit all over again, sulking about sulking, arms folded in close against his chest. It’s a bit chilly at night still, damp ocean air and breeze blowing in across the water. He’s not even sure why he’s still sitting here, just stubbornly trying to prove some point; he’s stopped having anything new to think about ages ago.

“He knows everything about everything,” he says irritably, despite how tired he is. “All the time.”

“I don’t know about that,” Marv says calmly, puffing away. “But he certainly knows when to ask for help.”

“Ask  _ you?” _

“Don’t be rude, shithead. He didn’t think you’d be ready to talk to him, but he got worried when you didn’t come back.”

“He fusses.”

“You’re lucky.”

Taliesin glances at him sharply despite himself and Marv just shrugs. “You know he could care less and you’d still be just as mad for him.”

“Maybe he should care less, then.”

“Uh huh, you’re right. Too much caring, that’s the problem. Nailed it kid.”

“I’m not a child.”

“You’re right, you’re a big whiny-ass man. Now are you going to tell me what the matter is or not?”

He doesn’t know why he bothers, but he does, and Marv for his part just listens. He nods his head now and then, refills his pipe, resettles his position, but he lets Taliesin go on and on and on until he feels as if he’s vomited up his soul, even more exhausted with the words all spilled out of him.

“So what you’re saying is, in a nutshell, he’s mad at you for sneaking around behind his back.”

“Right.”

“Which you did.”

“...right.”

“And you’re mad at him for sneaking around behind your back. Which he also did.”

“I… guess, yes.”

“You’re seeing the problem here, right?”

Taliesin doesn’t say anything, reaching up to pull at the ends of his hair. It’s not like he doesn’t get it, he just… Honestly it’s a bit stupid and he knows they’re both in the wrong and this fight probably happened for nothing and everything is blown out of proportion, but he can’t shake how much he hates the idea that Cort knows more about his own family than he does. That’s almost as bad as knowing that Cort always has more to say than he feels like he can share.

That’s not even news for fuck’s sake; Cort has always been reserved, even as a child. There could be hundreds of things it doesn’t occur to him to tell Taliesin. More. That’s just how he is and how he’s always been, and maybe the problem is with Taliesin after all. 

Taliesin, who  _ definitely, knowingly,  _ keeps things to himself. Who  _ deliberately, purposefully, _ keeps Cort in the dark.

He drops his head down into his hands and doesn’t move, the heels of his palms pressing hard into the bone of his brow where a low ache started hours ago, sending a low grumble of agony through the rest of his skull.

“Have you had anything to drink in the last six hours?”

“I could use a pint or twelve.”

“I meant  _ water, _ dumbass.”

“Oh. No.”

“Uh huh.” Marv gets up and Taliesin just stares at him like he can’t comprehend the sudden shift in elevation. “Well, come on then.”

“What-”

“You don’t have to go home kid, but you can’t stay here.” When he doesn’t move, Marv sighs and rubs the back of his neck. “You look like shit and you need to eat something and sleep. Do you want me to take you back to Cort?”

Taliesin shakes his head.

“Then come back to the barracks. We can still sneak in before curfew.”


	33. 25 (Part 6)

Life in the barracks is a bit like living aboard a ship - it’s crowded, cramped, noisey, and there’s nowhere to put his shit. Even in the relatively low rent establishment where he and Cort shared - share? - a room, what with its raucous tavern downstairs and the sounds of bottles smashing in the street at all hours of the night, he’s gotten used to a certain level of privacy and quiet.

Both are in short supply.

He ends up sharing a bunk with a burly sailor who snores like something somewhere in his face is malfunctioning, and on his second night he is woken by a creaking, grunting shutter that makes the whole bed shake. He almost goes rolling off his pallet in alarmed confusion until he realizes with some chagrin that his bunkmate is not actually having a stroke so much as, well, having a  _ stroke _ .

Fantastic. Just  _ great.  _ He curls up small on his side in unfamiliar blankets, covers his face with a musty pillow, and tries not to think of anything until the rocking stops and the snoring starts up again.

He doesn’t spend a lot of time sleeping, and the watery feeling of fatigue makes time stretch out forever. He looks awful too, grim and wan with dark shadows beneath his eyes, unshaven and dilapidated in ill-fitting borrowed clothes because he hadn’t thought to take any of his own things with him.

He honestly had not anticipated being gone for so long, or at all really, but every time he thinks about the argument, the hard words flung back and forth between them, that same sticky feeling of panic starts to close his throat. It doesn’t work at all with how he misses Cort desperately, like a piece of his body has been removed, a vital cog in his construction. He doesn’t run quite right without it and he dwells on it hopelessly, both paralyzed and frantic at once.

And still he doesn’t go home. He also doesn’t see Celeste. It’s a guilt-inducing misery, but that’s what began this rift in the first place and anyway he doesn’t want her to see him this way, messy and chaotic and fucking  _ sad. _

And afraid. Beneath the indecision he is terrified, too aware of his own predilections, his negative tendencies, the wild urges to set bridges aflame even under his own feet.

The third day - or is it the fifth? - almost ends him, coming back from an aimless walk around town to find his bag set neatly on his bed, full of his things. His heart is in his throat and his hands are shaking as he dumps the satchel out, upsetting the neatly folded clothing and scattering an assortment of sundries over the thin mattress.

He doesn’t have much, they travel light, but it takes several minutes of swallowing down the swirling panic that twists tight like a noose around his throat before he realizes that this is only  _ some _ of his things. Enough is missing that it seems purposeful, and eventually he just ends up at the foot of his bed with his nose pressed to a neatly folded shirt, breathing in the scent of the soap their laundress uses and imagining he has his face buried in Cort’s collar.

“Did he come here himself?” he asks, still sitting there like a lump, when Marv comes in looking weary.

“‘Course he did. Was hoping to see you, I think, but you were out.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That you were fine. Not used to it yet, but settling in.”

“Oh.” That seems almost disappointingly reasonable. “How did he - did he seem - okay?”

“Do you want him to be?”

“Of course,” he starts, immediately aware that he’s being disingenuous. “No. I don’t know.”

“He seemed sad,” Rix offers, peering down from the top bunk of the bed next to his. “I felt bad for him.”

Taliesin doesn’t know what to say to that, an automatically queasy clutch in his stomach coupled with illogical annoyance at Rix’s sympathy. Feel bad for  _ me _ , he wants to insist, selfish and immature. They’re supposed to be  _ his _ friends after all, but there hasn’t been just him in quite some time has there? Cort’s been around for years now, it’s only natural that some loyalties shift. And anyway, he hates the thought of Cort alone.

It’s too easy to picture, Cort’s natural stillness and quietude expanding outward into isolated silence. He imagines him eating alone at their table, a single plate across from an empty chair. Sleeping tucked into only one side of the bed out of habit, waking up with a hand stretched out, palm down in empty sheets where the warm skin of another body should be.

He thinks about the way Cort curls around him at night, cheek pressed against his hair and arm around his waist, and wonders if he’s sleeping any better than Taliesin is on his rock hard pallet, tossing and turning in the dark.

It’s awful, any way he cuts it.

“You should go see him,” Marv says, plopping down on the lower bunk of Rix’s bed and tugging his shoes off. There’s a hole in the end of his sock and Taliesin can see most of a gnarled toe.

“To get the rest of my stuff?”

“Or just to see how he’s doing.” The look Marv shoots him this time is sharper and much less amused, and he ducks his head, smooths creases from the shirt in his lap.

“Is that a good idea? My feelings haven’t changed, I doubt his have either. What if we just fight again?”

“Better to shout about your differences than just not talk at all, I say.”

“I’m tired of shouting.”

“Well I’m tired of listening to you bitch about it!” Marv snaps, lurching suddenly out of sitting position, feet bare on the dirty floor. Taliesin flinches and stares up at him, not expecting the sudden outburst. Marv points a finger in his face, and then pokes him, none too gently, right between the eyes. “You’re making your own problems, fuckhead. Stop whining and go  _ clean it up.” _

He doesn’t even have time to respond before Marv is huffing away, leaving Taliesin to stare after him in disbelief.  _ What the fuck? _ His knee jerk reaction is to be affronted (what does Marv know anyway?) but realistically-

Realistically Marv is probably right, the fucker. He sighs and looks down at the clothing crumpled in his lap, wishing it would tell him what to do with himself, and explain why it is he’s such a coward.

The bunk next to his creaks as Rix leaves off writing in his journal and slides down to the floor. The mattress dips beneath him as Rix sits down, leaning his slim young body against Taliesin’s side. It makes Taliesin smile and then want to cry, but the desire is distant, muted and confused like everything else he’s been feeling lately, and he manages not to do much of anything at all.

“He doesn’t mean it,” Rix says quietly, setting his chin on Taliesin’s shoulder. “Well, he does, but not hateful-like. It’s just because he loves you.”

“Marv is too mean to love anything but hookers and hooch.”

Rix laughs and doesn’t dignify that with a response. He also doesn’t seem particularly inclined to move, reaching over to curl a hand reassuringly around Taliesin’s arm and Taliesin is - grateful. And chagrined. His boy has grown up to be so mature, but he’s also just so… 

Sensitive. Not the way Taliesin is sensitive, all wild and emotional and half-controlled. He just feels things, deeply so. It makes Taliesin worry for him, and over his own undue influence, a poor example for anyone.

“Do you think I should go talk to him?” he asks, and Rix is quiet for a long time, deep in thought.

“I want you to,” he says finally. “But that’s because  _ I _ want you to. Because I like Cort, and it seems like he makes you happy. I know you can make up with him if you want. You just have to figure out how you feel about it first.”

“I don’t want to feel anything about it.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

Taliesin sighs. “No, I suppose not. I feel too many things, I guess.”

“Then you should think about it some more,” Rix says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “But I think you already know what to do.”

“That’s putting an awful lot of faith in me to do the right thing.”

Rix shrugs. “What’s the right thing? You always say that’s different for everybody, right? But you have to know how you feel, even if you can’t control what that is. Then you can  _ choose _ what you want.”

Taliesin tilts his head to look at Rix, the boy close enough to be a blur of tan skin and sun-bleached hair. “When did you get so fucking smart?”

“You’re the one who always says all that stuff.”

He doesn’t want to think about what a hypocrite he is. “I probably stole it out of a book. You shouldn’t listen to me so much anyway.”

Rix snorts. “Whatever. You give good advice, so long as it’s not about  _ you.” _

That is… probably fair. And somehow it does make him feel better, like the acknowledgement of his specific failings somehow mitigates what feels like unearned praise. He reaches to put an arm around Rix’s slim shoulders, giving the boy a squeeze. “Thanks kid.”

“You sound like Marv.”

“How dare you. Respect your elders.” But he’s laughing, somehow, and Rix is looking at him with this quiet little smile like everything in the world is going to be alright, and despite how easy and lazy and simple it would be to just lie down and bury himself under a pile of his dirty sheets and clean laundry, he gets up instead.

Marv is in the courtyard, sitting under one of the scraggly, neglected trees and chewing on the end of his pipe, watching two younger men in a sparring match that seems to be more laughing and pretend-insults than actual combat. He doesn’t look up when Taliesin sits down next to him. 

“Sorry.”

“Me too.”

Taliesin lets that sit for a minute, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. The hem on the cuffs of these trousers is fraying and he can’t even remember whose pants he’s wearing right now. He should change his clothes, get cleaned up, but all of that sounds like too much effort.

“I’m not gonna bitch about it anymore,” he says, mostly just to say it, and Marv snorts and finally looks over at him.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, kid.”

“Okay. I’ll try not to, then.”

Marv rolls his eyes. “Complaining is a sacred and time honored tradition, there’s nothing wrong with it. But eventually you are gonna have to stop sitting on your balls and actually do something.”

“I know.”

“Do you? ‘Cause I think you forget sometimes that the only reason he’s actually here is  _ you.” _

That’s- painful. And completely true, of course, which is why it’s so awful to hear, and he can’t bear to keep looking Marv in the eye.

“I fucked up real good, didn’t I.”

“Yeah, but he did too. Neither of you nitwits know how to fight productively.”

“How the hell do you fight productively?”

Marv snorts and dumps the ash out of his pipe, stubs a stray spark out with a calloused thumb before it can set the grass alight. “If you two manage not to kill each other, you’ll figure it out.”

Taliesin just nods, because that seems to make about as much sense as anything else. “Sorry,” he says again, another silence stretched out until it grows thin. “For being such a piece of shit.”

He doesn’t even mean about Cort, just in general, and Marv gives him a look like he knows. “Kid- I just want you to be happy. Don’t get me wrong, I like Cort. I think he’s good for you. But if you decide you’re over it - for any reason, not just because of this little clusterfuck -” Marv shrugs. “Then I’m on your side.”

“I thought there didn’t have to be sides.”

“There doesn’t if you’re a fucking adult, but since this is you we’re talking about-”

Taliesin sighs.

“I’m just saying. If you like him, I like him. If you don’t, then I’ve never liked him. Either way you’re still my first born.”

“You’re not my real dad,” Taliesin protests, mostly out of habit, and then immediately bursts into tears.

Thank fuck the pair fighting or flirting or foreplaying in the corner has since gone away; Marv just reaches out to put an arm around Taliesin like he’d put his own arm around Rix earlier. Doesn’t even bother to say anything, just sits there smoking while Taliesin quietly combusts like nothing is amiss.

Eventually the tears stop. He scrubs his face too hard with his shirtsleeves to mop up the mess - more mess - and Marv gives his shoulder a fatherly little pat. “All good there, dumbass?”

“You say the sweetest things.”

Marv just laughs and leans over to lay a smacking kiss on his temple, breathing smoke all over him in the process. “You’ll be alright, son. You’ll be just fine.”


	34. 25 (Part 7)

He stews on it for two more days, spending time wandering around the dusty streets alone deep in thought, back and forth in the harbor along the water’s edge.

It doesn’t take him long to admit that Rix is completely right. Not wanting to admit how he feels is a different kettle of fish than not knowing at all, and the longer he feigns ignorance the worse he’s going to make the situation. 

He knows exactly what he wants to do. It’s what he’s wanted to do all along, because he fucking  _ hates _ being without Cort, and he hates the idea of Cort being alone, and if he allows this to go on much longer he’s not going to be able to live with himself. All he can think about now that he’s over being a stubborn jackass is Cort sitting there waiting for him to make up his mind.

Maybe he was right. Maybe Taliesin is cruel. Cort deserves better than that; he should know that Taliesin loves him  _ \- still, always, desperately -  _ and this frankly is a fucking shitty way to show it.

So he’s going to make up with Cort. That is, if Cort will have him. And it will fucking serve him right if he won’t.

He turns up in the street outside the inn a great deal less kempt than he would like, but it hardly matters. The closer he gets to the inn the more anxious he becomes, and by the time he forces himself through the tavern doors he's frayed and sweating and rumpled, hands and knees shaking like he's coming down off something hard.

He’s still mapping out what he wants to say as he makes his way up the stairs, grateful that it’s still early in the day and that no one is around to see him muttering to himself like a nutter. He’s never been good at scripts, never much bothering to plan out what to say because his mind can’t account for all the variables and so often he ends up trusting instinct on the fly, making it up as he goes along.

He wishes, and not for the first time, that he could be more like Cort. It probably helps that Cort only says things that are true, and he-

He can’t think in detail about what a liar he is or he’ll lose his nerve. His hand is already shaking around the key, fumbling it hard into the lock and belatedly remembering that he should probably knock.

There’s no answer. He dithers in the hallway, hesitating, wondering if it’s right that he just bursts in. It’s still his room too, though, isn’t it? It hasn’t been  _ so _ long. Right? And all his stuff is still here, the meaningless sundries he’s followed home like a trail of breadcrumbs through the woods.

And Cort wouldn’t have come to the barracks if he didn’t want Taliesin to come back. He holds onto that thought as he turns the key in the lock and lets himself in.

It looks… different. It’s been almost two weeks since he’s been back here, and though the room is the same - the chipped washstand, the faded wooden table, the bed beneath the window - something about it just seems off.

It’s too quiet, too still. Motes of dust sparkle lazily in the sunlight trickling through the window, stirred by his opening the door, and he stands in the middle of the floor for a long moment before he realizes what's amiss.

Cort’s things are gone, his clothes, his weapons, even the book he was last reading. All missing. His shaving kit no longer sits next to the basin, his heavy wool cloak no longer hanging behind the door. The bed is made, not with their sheets but with the inn’s crappy linens, and when he realizes that the rest of all he owns in the world has been left neatly arranged in a basket set in the seat of one of the chairs, he sits down on the floor.

He can’t even do that quite right, tangled up in his own long limbs until he ends up in an ungainly half-sprawl, on his ass with his legs crumpled up in front of him.

It’s fine, he’s never going to move again.

He’s always wondered what this would be like, the thought a persistent specter haunting him for longer than just these few weeks. He’s never been sure what he would feel when Cort finally got sick of it all, got tired of his shit, left him. Now he knows.

It's what he imagines being dead feels like, like being a corpse. He can feel himself desiccating, his skin stretched too tightly over his bones, mouth open in a scream of silence as light too bright burns his eyes out of their sockets and his heart shrivels like an unsprouted seed, rattling around in the empty cage of his chest.

He can’t even fucking  _ cry _ , he just sits there, mute with grief for what must be hours, because this is something  _ he’s  _ done. Like an ungrateful child unworthy of his gifts, he’s squandered them. Now they’re gone and the worst thing about it is that he  _ knew _ that this would happen, saw it coming like clouds on the horizon. Even then he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t move fast enough to save himself.

He  _ deserves _ this.

He’s still sitting there when the door pushes open. Cort steps into the room and stops, seeing him sitting there like a fool.

They stare at each other.

“What in green hell are you doing on the floor?”

Taliesin doesn’t have an immediate answer, squinting up at Cort as though staring into the sun. “Are you real?” 

Cort pauses, still for a long moment before he crosses the short distance and takes a knee, bringing them level. “Do you want me to prove it to you?”

Mutely Taliesin nods, unable to take his eyes off Cort’s face as he slowly reaches out to brush the backs of his knuckles against Taliesin’s cheek.

He’s cold and numb and Cort’s skin is hot as moth wings burning; when hands reach to cup his face he starts to shiver. Cort pulls him into his arms like he’s pulling him out of the sea, and Taliesin presses his lips to the side of his throat and prays that he hasn’t lost his mind.

“I thought you’d gone.”

“Not permanently. Had I known you’d be here I would have walked a bit quicker.” He drops his head, presses his mouth against Taliesin’s hair. “That must have scared you.”

“A little,” Taliesin says, too quick to be anything but honest. “I just always thought you’d still say goodbye. At least to rub my nose in it.”

Cort pulls back, looks at him. “Do you think so poorly of me?”

“Of course not.” And he doesn’t. But he also doesn’t explain how sometimes he hopes that, when Cort finally  _ does _ leave, he’ll make it hurt so badly that Taliesin will never be tempted to love anything else for the rest of his life.

But that sounds fucking insane, doesn’t it? He can’t say that out loud. He buries the thought under a smile instead - what he hopes is a smile anyway, reaching up to curve his hand around the back of Cort’s neck, edge the tips of his fingers into the roots of his dark hair.

“I missed you.”

Cort is watching him, blue eyes searching his face for - he isn’t sure. He’s never known what Cort sees when he looks at him, what’s even there beyond a tangled mess of too many emotions and not enough sleep. A pretty face, a good fuck; nothing of worth, and yet here Cort is yet again, picking him up off the floor.

“I missed you too,” Cort says finally, drawing back to lean against the table now that they’re on their feet again like proper adults. He folds his arms across his chest, loosely but faintly reserved and it makes Taliesin feel sheepish and stupid, like his weakness has forced them back into an intimacy that he hasn’t earned. Cort is kind; too kind. Taliesin could use that, maybe  _ is  _ using that - but he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t need any more sins on his conscience.

“How have you been?” he asks lamely, reaching for something, anything, to guide him forward into this conversation. Cort doesn’t respond, still watching him with that expression he can’t quite read, and it doesn’t take long before it makes him unravel.

“Right, I’m… stupid.” He rakes a hand through his hair, rubs his neck, looks away and then back. “And I’m really, really sorry.” 

Cort doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, and Taliesin shrugs and leaps in with both feet. 

“I should have told you. Everything. Right from the start. I don’t know why I didn’t - I mean, I do, I’m not a  _ complete  _ moron - but I shouldn’t have let that stop me. I guess I just got caught up in it, the whole-” and here he grimaces, shoulders slumping at his own misstepping foolishness. “Sister. Thing. I’ve just always wondered what she was like and where she was and whether or not she’d like me, and- Cort she’s a great kid, she’s  _ so  _ great - and I just-” he sighs. “I got stupid.”

Greedy, he thinks is the better word, and he says as much. “I thought that there was some kind of-” Gods, this sounds idiotic. “-angle I could find. Some way to get what I want and everyone stays happy, and everything is just fine. And I should have known better because  _ nothing  _ is  _ ever  _ fine, and I was a hypocritical shithead and I made you mad at me, and I just… am sorry.”

Cort finally uncrosses his arms, braces his hands back against the table. “I’m not mad at you, I’m just-”

“Don’t say disappointed.”

Cort shoots him a look and then pointly doesn’t say it, though all in all it doesn’t feel like much of a victory. “I just thought you trusted me.”

“I do, I just-” How can he explain this, struggling to get the words out around the anxious clutch of squirming nausea in his stomach. “I know that I’m- a challenge. I just want you to  _ approve  _ of me I guess, which sounds ridiculous. I don’t want you to think poorly of me, for being… like this.” He drops his arms as if to indicate his entire being, which explains nothing and does little to conceal the way he feels so horribly desperate.

This is more honesty than he’s used to putting out there all at once, and he feels very small, the room large and empty around him. He awkwardly rubs his arm and suppresses the urge to scuff the toe of his boot into the floor, wishing Cort would say something to save him from himself and knowing that he definitely doesn’t deserve it. 

“I never meant to make you feel like I don’t-” he takes a deep breath around the clutch in his chest. “Like I don’t love you. Or trust you. Or like I want this less than I want other things, or just- that I don’t value you. I do, I fucking- I swear on my fucking  _ life _ I do, and I just-”

His mad tumble of words is cut short when Cort steps in and kisses him, yanking him forward with a hand curled into the collar of his shirt. It’s abrupt and rough, Cort’s mouth pressed hard over his, but it doesn’t go anywhere beyond that and after a long moment Cort lets him go. He doesn’t stray far, just a wobbly step back to find his footing, his eyes hopeful and wary on Cort’s face.

Cort just shakes his head, rubs a hand tiredly over his brow, and fixes him with those clear blue eyes. “You break my heart, you know that?” Taliesin isn’t sure he does, but Cort shakes his head again and huffs a little humorless laugh. “Of course you do.”

“I’m-”

“Don’t apologize, that’s not meant to- anyway. I’m sorry too.”

“You don’t need to-” he starts automatically and then stops, cut off by a blatantly skeptical look.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what I knew about- your sister,” he finishes, only a hint of the stutter in the words like he still can’t quite bring himself to say Celeste’s name. “To be honest…” Cort sighs, rubbing his eyes again; he must not be sleeping well, and there is no reason Taliesin should feel just a tiny bit pleased about that - not that it stops him. 

“To be honest, it didn’t occur to me. Not at first. I’m not saying this to upset you,” he cautions when Taliesin shifts restlessly. “You have to understand, Taliesin, our families, our  _ fathers- _ There are things I just know that I don’t think about every day. I don’t set out to hide things from you, it just sometimes doesn’t occur to me that you don’t know, or that you ought to. In this particular case it was poorly done and that’s my fault, I should have considered. I just didn’t want to see you get hurt.”

“Why are you so convinced I will be?”

“Because I’ve met your father. He doesn’t like you touching his things.”

Predictably that makes Taliesin want to explode, feeling the injustice of it all. Why he even cares about that anymore is anyone’s guess; he doesn’t rightly know either, but it’s fucking unfair.

“I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it,” he mutters unwisely, and Cort sighs.

“That is exactly what I’m afraid of.” And then, more softly. “You know we’ve been fortunate.”

“You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t send him a thank you note.”

Incomprehensibly that makes Cort smile, even if it’s just a little ghost of a thing. It slices neatly through the burgeoning temper forming in Taliesin’s chest, reminding him suddenly of why they’re both here.

“So… what do you want me to do?” he finally asks when it seems like all Cort is going to do is stand there watching him, reading gods know what off his face. “Do you want me not to see her?”

The look on Cort’s face softens at the plaintive question, probably sensing that such a thing is there for the asking. Maybe it’s not smart, offering to give up something that he wants so badly, but Cort sets it neatly aside. “I’m not going to ask you to do that.”

“...really?”

Cort lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “When all of this started, I told you - I’m not here to take anything from you. I want you to have what you want, it’s… important. To me. I just want you to be safe. And anyway,” he remarks, dark brows lifting pointedly. “You’d just end up resenting me.”

He knows himself well enough to recognize the truth in that.

“Won’t this make you unhappy?” he asks softly, unable to stop himself. 

He should just take the win; he should shut up about it, call it a day, but he’s stupid and he loves Cort and he’s always been far too troubled by  _ feelings  _ to able to reliably exercise good sense. He also can’t keep his distance, stepping in slowly until they’re near enough to touch, his hands and eyes on Cort’s chest. It’s much easier to look there than to meet his gaze, afraid of - what, exactly? Seeing regret? Proof of Cort’s sacrifice?

Gods, he’s not wrong is the thing. Cort is never really wrong, just overly cautious. Maybe Taliesin is being unreasonable, it’s been known to happen - and here he goes. Even in getting exactly what he thinks he wants, he still manages to find a way to teeter slightly out of control.

Incognizant to the wild spin of his anxiety, or at least immune, Cort reaches for him, taking his hips and pulling him in half a step more. He smells good, like the soap he uses to shave, clean and distracting. He gets a bit lost in it, starting a little when Cort finally answers him.

“I’ll get over it.”

Well that’s… something.

“What if I don’t want you to just ‘get over it’?”

“Then what do you want?”

He doesn’t know. That would be entirely too easy. “I don’t want to put you in a position where- I don’t want you to have to lie to me. Or for me.”

“I don’t lie to you. And if we’re in a place where anything hinges on my ability to lie on your behalf, we’re already in rather too much trouble for it to matter much, don’t you think?”

Again, not wrong, but he feels like he’s being humored. It is completely like him to make a mountain out of a molehill, but they’re finally talking and they haven’t been for weeks and he just can’t let this go.

“And my father?”

“What about him?”

“Are you afraid of him?”

“No.” He isn’t sure what to say to that at all, and he’s quiet for too long thinking about it, only looking up when Cort takes his chin in hand and lifts it for him. “Are you?”

That he  _ really _ can’t answer. He blinks, looks away again. 

“What I said before, about your loyalties-”

“Taliesin-”

“No, it makes sense. Not that they belong, you know, to  _ him _ , just-” He shrugs. “Just that you have them. I don't expect you to care for me and no one else.”

Cort laughs humorlessly. “You're entitled to. That's how I'd like to feel about you.” He shrugs when Taliesin looks back at him sharply. “You weren't wrong, before. I am jealous. A bit.”

“Of Celeste?”

Cort shifts uncomfortably. “I didn't say it made sense. And even when you were sneaking around, you were still coming back to me. That's something. I don't discount that.”

It does nothing to diminish how guilty he still feels. “Her being in my life, in our life- This doesn’t change us.”

“Everything changes us. But,” he continues when Taliesin opens his mouth to protest, firmly undermining whatever pathetic, unhelpful thing he would have said. “I’m not going to lose you over this.”

Cort lifts his hands up, sets them on Taliesin’s shoulders, fingers curling around to the nape of his neck, strong and warm. It sends his heart straight up into his throat, makes his stomach clutch, his chest go tight, the naked sincerity in Cort’s voice eliciting a full body response. This could kill him, it really could.

“Are you sure?” he can’t help but ask, searching the blue of Cort’s eyes for hidden storms in the depths. “Are you sure it’s alright? You won’t change your mind?”

“I’m sure I’ll question my sanity at some point,” Cort says wryly, mouth bending up into half a smile. “But no- I won’t change my mind. The way I figure, my being here with you is just as much of a reason for him to push in if he really wanted to. And if not that, then something else. He doesn’t have to have a justification. And you and I… We’re not exactly safe and cautious. Anything could happen, to either one of us. I don’t want to waste time bickering with you about something we both know you’re going to do, no matter what I say. Not when-” he stops, takes a breath, and it makes Taliesin’s heart lurch in his chest. “Not when we never know how much time we may have left.”

Cort smiles, wan and thin and tired, and just the tiniest bit hopeful. “We’ll make it work. Can’t we?”

That’s all it takes to make Taliesin pitch himself forward at him, nearly toppling them over when he throws his arms around Cort’s neck. Cort laughs, startled, and folds his arms around his waist, hands strong and soothingly warm along his spine.

“Do you really mean it?”

“Yeah,” Cort says quietly, voice low and slightly frayed, an unexpected amount of emotion in just the single syllable. It makes Taliesin’s heart ache, throbbing dully when Cort holds him a little bit tighter and presses a kiss to his shoulder. “Anyway, if you're going to do something mad I may as well be there to pull your ass out of the fire.”

“It is a rather nice ass.”

“Definitely worth preserving.”

There's a long moment of silence that softens when Taliesin roughly sighs. “I  _ missed  _ you, you fuck.”

“I missed you too.”

They stay that way for what feels like ages, wrapped in each other. Cort is warm and solid in his arms and his closeness begins to fill some empty part of him back up again, stirring currents gone slack. He almost forgets to ask about the room, so tempted to drag Cort to the bed and have his fill of other things he's been missing.

“What happened to all your things?”

“What? Oh.” Cort eases back and blinks, looking around the room as though he’s forgotten where they are.

“Did you move rooms?”

“Not exactly.”

“Not exactly…?” Taliesin prompts when Cort fails to explain for what turns from a suspicious to an alarming amount of time. “You weren’t really leaving were you? You said-”

“No, no. It just- I think it would be easier if I showed you.”


	35. 25 (Part 8)

Whatever it was that he was expecting, it definitely wasn’t this.

Cort leads him through the early evening, following winding streets toward the market district and into one of the little neighborhoods beyond. He doesn’t say much, just ‘this way’ or ‘watch your step’, but he’s got the basket with Taliesin’s things in it tucked under one arm and Taliesin mutely follows along as it seems he’s meant to.

They cut through an alley between two thatched-roofed houses, emerging onto a little side street lined with more of the same, the cobbled market thoroughfare fading into a dusty lane. The road is empty with the hour and they stop almost arbitrarily, pausing in the middle before one of the buildings. 

“This is it.”

“This… is a house.” Cort is studiously not looking at him in that way he does when he’s suddenly unsure of something and is trying to hide it, eyes on the dusty facade. “You bought a house?”

“Rented,” Cort corrects, and he almost sounds embarrassed, so much so that Taliesin has to circle around in front of him, trying to force him to meet his eyes. He doesn’t, looking up and away. 

“A… house. Okay.”

“You think I’ve lost my mind.”

“No. I think you’ll have a very good explanation, whenever you stop being embarrassed over whatever it is.”

“Magnanimous.” Cort glances at him, and he shrugs.

“It’s you.”

They stand there, looking at one another for a long moment before Cort finally shakes his head, lifting his free hand to rub awkwardly at his jaw. “Well you’d better come and see.”

The cottage is small, quaint almost, faintly shabby on the outside but in good enough repair that someone with half a mind to make the place look lived in could manage it without too much trouble. He can already see where Cort has made an effort, though in an excessively Cort-like fashion. Neither of them is much of a homemaker, but there’s something almost - gods help him -  _ adorable  _ about the way there’s a touch here and there of humanity amidst the empty walls and bare floors.

One book on the bookshelf. A pair of boots awkwardly placed next to the door, like they aren’t sure whether they’re coming or going. One curtain hung, poorly, the rod slightly askew, and then a pile of them off to one side in a posture that clearly screams  _ I gave up _ , and really the single cup and dish next to the wash basin is just depressing. Sort of the way that the garden beds are out front, stripped of everything living, weeds and otherwise, for lack of knowing what’s what, conspicuously bare in a way that says that someone really tried.

Cort puts the basket of his things down on the the table that splits the small front room into a suggestion of kitchen and living space, and squares his shoulders. “Go on, say it.”

“Say what?”

“Whatever it is you’ve got to say.”

“Who says I’ve got anything to say?” he asks lightly, wandering over to touch things, as he does, running his fingers across countertops, worn but clean, and over the still-warm stones above the hearth.

“It’s you.”

He turns to look at Cort at that, and circles back to sit down facing him on the edge of the table. Patiently, and probably infuriatingly, he doesn’t ask, just folds his hands and looks up at Cort until the love of his life gets over hemming and hawing and staring at the ceiling and looks back at him.

“I just thought that-” Cort stops, tries again. “I thought that you might like to be closer. To-” he still can’t quite bring himself to say Celeste’s name, but his cheeks are flushed such an endearing red that Taliesin can hardly hold it against him. “The inn is a bit far for visiting, and it isn’t really the sort of place a young girl should be spending time in, with or without her brother.”

“I suppose it isn’t, is it?”

“It isn’t,” Cort affirms definitively, shooting him a sideways exasperated look like he should already know better.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Taliesin admits, a hand to rub at the back of his neck and a sheepish smile on his face.

“Of course not.” Cort sounds so annoyed but he still won’t make eye contact, awkwardly fidgeting with the hem of his shirt in one hand. Taliesin reaches out and snags him by the collar, pulling him closer.

“It was very kind of you to think of her.”

_ “Kind?”  _ he protests, almost as though he’s offended, but he goes when summoned and ends up sighing, standing between Taliesin’s knees. “I wish it was. I wanted you home, and- happy. Happier. I hope. But I suppose I should have discussed it with you first, I don’t mean to always be forcing these decisions on you. She’s your sister, you should have a say.”

“Cort.”

“I don’t want you to be unhappy, is the thing. Ever, really, but especially not because of- me. I don’t think I can bear it if-”

“Sweetheart.”

Cort cuts himself off abruptly and tilts his head, his eyes finally finding Taliesin’s. They close, just for a moment, when Taliesin reaches to take his face in his hands. He leans obligingly forward when pulled, still when Taliesin kisses his cheek, his temple, his forehead.

“What would I do without you here, keeping me from making an ass of myself?”

“Be an ass, probably.” Taliesin laughs at that and Cort almost smiles. “It’s not  _ not  _ what you want, then?”

“What did tutor say about double negatives?”

“Oh shut up. Is this what you want? And don’t say yes just for my sake.”

“Darling, I would never. Your single-curtained bachelor pad is far too distressing for diplomacy.”

“Hey!”

Taliesin laughs, leans up, kisses him. And doesn’t stop kissing him until he stops trying to talk through it, all his attention in the moment. Only then does he pull back, tipping Cort’s head up to look him in the eye. “I love you, and I love that you thought of me. And I will love this place. I’ll learn to garden things.”

“Please don’t.”

“And cook.”

“Gods preserve us.”

Taliesin laughs, intentionally villainous. “I’ll be the perfect housewife, you’ll see. You’ll all see.”

Cort rolls his eyes. “I’m going to take you to bed now so you stop threatening our doom.”

“You think that will stop me?”

“I think it’ll give me an excuse to tie you to the headboard until you forget all about whatever it was you just said.”

Taliesin narrows his eyes. “Touche. Well played.” He pauses. “Would you really-?”

Cort smirks, throws him over one shoulder with an unflattering grunt, and turns his whole world upside down.


	36. 25 (Part 9)

“Don't be nervous.”

“I'm not nervous.  _ You're  _ nervous.”

“I am not.” Cort looks at him blandly and Taliesin’s already smiling. Nervously. “Alright fine,  _ a bit  _ nervous. Just a little.”

“You think she won't like me?”

He blinks. “What? Sweetheart, no, of course not. She's going to love you, just like I do.”

Cort, obviously less in need of reassurance than infinite patience, just stops in his tracks and makes Taliesin circle back to him. “Then what.”

Ah. 

“I… guess… I'm afraid you won't like her. And that you'll be upset with me. And then  _ she'll  _ be upset with me. And- why is this so much harder than introducing you to women I want to sleep with?”

“Because there's no risk of rejection,” Cort reasons mildly, and Taliesin snorts. “And either way you're still mine.”

“You know I  _ am  _ still yours. I'll always be yours. Nothing changes that.”

He reaches to take Cort's hand and, somewhat doubtful, Cort lets him have it. They're not really the sort for hand holding, never have been, but Taliesin doesn't let go. Not that he’ll admit that it’s more for him than it is for Cort; by the time they get to Bael and Margaret’s, he's clutching it like a lifeline, white knuckled and clammy palmed. Cort, probably wisely, says nothing about it.

Celeste is outside in the front garden when they turn down the lane. She's wearing an oversized straw hat that slips down over her eyes when she pops her head up over the potted herbs and waves at them wildly. They're not even halfway down the street before she's racing to meet them, and Taliesin forgets that he's actually terrified and opens his arms for a hug, laughing and swinging her around when Celeste leaps into his arms 

“You came!”

“Of course I did my darling, I said I would.”

“But it's been  _ ages.” _

Taliesin laughs and accepts a smacking kiss to the side of his face before he sets her down. “Celie, I was just here yesterday.”

“Ages,” she insists, and there's just enough of a pretense at petulance in her voice to make him reach out and tug her hat down over her eyes again.

“Well I'm here now. And I've brought my friend.”

He feels more than sees Cort start behind him, still flexing his crushed hand when they turn to look at him. Celeste is instantly serious and it's a bit hard not to smile at the wary surprise on Cort’s face.

Celeste, blessedly precocious, seems to have no such issue. Gravely she removes her hat and hands it to her brother, marching forward on bare feet with the dignity of a duchess four times her age to put her hand out for Cort to shake. “Celeste Tesvail. I understand we’re to be friends.”

Cort immediately looks over Celeste’s head at him, still clutching his injured hand, and Taliesin has to bite his tongue to keep from laughing out loud. He was exactly the same the first time she did this to  _ him _ , and he has to admit - from the other side, it’s highly amusing.

Not that Cort will give him the satisfaction of seeing him stutter. Equally as grave, he extends the hand that Taliesin crushed and firmly shakes. “Cort Raghnall. This is also my understanding.”

“You’re very tall.”

“Yes.”

“My brother says you train men to fight with swords.”

“Yes. And shields. And other things.”

“You must be good at it.”

“I do my best.”

“Are you a nice person?”

“Not always.”

Celeste seems to mull that over. “Good. Taliesin is too nice, it gets him into trouble.”

Taliesin splutters.  _ “Excuse _ me-”

“Everyone says so,” Celeste confides, as though he’s said nothing.

“That is  _ not-”  _ They’re both still ignoring him.

“I can tell you that it’s true. It’s a problem.”

“You must like him a lot.”

It helps him not at all that he’s already red in the face when Cort looks up at him again, those blue, blue eyes considering.

“I do.”

Celeste nods like that’s exactly what she expected. “Well you’d better come in. I helped Margaret make cookies. Do you like cookies?”

He doesn’t hear what Cort replies as he’s dragged away in Celeste’s wake, powerful as it is, but he doesn’t really need to. Not when he’s too busy trying not to burst into tears in the middle of the street like an idiot, his momentary affront morphing all too easily into sentimentality and gratitude. Celeste looks tiny next to Cort, craning her neck up and up to look him in the face, and he looks back at her as solemnly and as seriously as if she were a full adult, affording her the same respectful attention he’s seen him give Veda.

It’s just so fucking  _ nice, _ he can hardly stand it. And maybe he does cry, just a little, but for once it’s because he’s happy and it doesn’t embarrass him at all.


	37. 25 (Part 10)

Cort spends most of that first afternoon seated across the shabby wooden table in Bael’s kitchen across from Celeste, talking in quiet and solemn tones as though they’re brokering a land deal. Hells - they might be for all Taliesin really knows, content to take a step back and sit somewhere out of the way, bemusedly watching them interact without any need to for his  interjection.

Not that it takes much to please him; now that the introduction is over, the heavy anxiety digging its sharp talons into his shoulders dissipates as if banished and he feels like he can breathe again. It makes it easier to chat over aimless nothings with Bael and Margaret, spending the day in a kind of familial normalcy that feels so strange.

When the sun starts to go down and they ready themselves to leave, Celeste stops him at the door, reaching up to pull on his shirt until he drops down to her level. She’s so slight and small; Ferryman stock is tall if not uniformly brawny and he wonders what she’ll look like when she’s older. Hopes that he’s around to see it.

“I like him,” she whispers in his ear, winding her arms around his neck in a tight hug, and then pulling back to look at his face. No - to look at his reaction. She’s already got a knack for reading people; it’s a bit disconcerting to have eyes so much like his own carefully sorting through his pieces.

“I like him too.”

“But do you _like him_ like him?”

“Do I-?” he stops, laughs. Celeste smiles at him gently like he’s being an idiot, her thin arms still looped around his neck. “I- suppose I did?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Of _course_ I know, I just- look you, you’re young, I wasn’t necessarily going to have this conversation with you until you were older.”

The look Celeste gives him is far too mature for her face, seeming to affirm that he is indeed some kind of moron. “I’m not a _child_ , Taliesin.”

“Yes you are,” he reminds her gently, and tugs her hair. “And there’s nothing wrong with that. But… to answer your question, Celie, yes. I-” he laughs. _“Like him_ like him. I love him. Very much.”

“Oh good.” The look of relief on Celeste’s little face is almost comical, earnest but with a touch of drama that reminds him of himself. “Now I don’t have to be embarrassed for you.”

“Embarrassed for me?”

“Because it’s so _obvious_ that he loves you too. _Honestly.”_

“Well far be it from me to embarrass you, sister dear,” he says, smirking and baffled, shaking his head as she rolls her eyes. “We’ve been- together. For a few years.”

“Why didn’t you just say so?”

“Well, it’s- I just-”

“Use your words Taliesin.”

“Hey. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that you both liked each other first, so I wouldn’t have to throw myself into the sea.”

He’s trying to make her laugh, joking, but she fixes those gray eyes on him instead, so steady and serious for a moment they seem blue in the dim light. “Why would it matter if I liked him? If you love someone, it doesn’t matter what anyone else says.”

That is-

It’s youthful and idealistic and naive, but honestly she’s really not wrong. But it also puts his own inner thoughts on the matter into sharp relief, tempered by unfortunate realism. Sometimes it does matter. It just does.

“Thanks for that, Celie.”

“Are you sad?”

“No,” he says, and smiles to cover over the lie. It’s only a partial lie anyway, one of the easy ones. “I am very, very happy.”

*

Happy enough to poke at it incessantly, like he needs to put a hole in it.

“So?”

“So…?”

He's doing that thing again, pacing in a straight line as he and Cort walk themselves home. He can never seem to maintain one position for very long, always one step in front or two steps behind. Cort never seems to pay it any mind, proceeding forward at the same steady pace that keeps Taliesin in his orbit.

“What did you… think?”

“About what?”

“About _Celeste,”_ he clarifies, exasperated. Cort can be so deliberately obtuse. Usually it means he's still making up his mind, and it makes Taliesin nervous.

“She seems like a nice girl.”

 _A nice girl._ That's- he doesn't even know what to do with that, watching Cort nonchalantly unlock their door, paying him no mind as he quietly comes unglued.

“Ready for bed?”

Right, because he'll be able to sleep for sure, and not vibrate right through the mattress. He stands there, still in his boots, silently flailing as Cort splashes water on his face and methodically undresses, which introduces another undesirably complicating variable into the jumble of his thoughts.

Not that _undesirable_ is really the right word.

“Good lord, can't you put on a shirt?”

Cort turns slowly to look at him, all fluid motion and hard muscled contour in the dim golden light, and calmly pulls the leather thong out of his hair. The motion makes his chest and arm flex and it's just so _rude,_ as is the way he looks so unconcerned as he reaches to undo the buckle of his belt.

“You want me to sleep in a shirt?”

“No,” Taliesin corrects, though he's half forgotten where he's going with this. “I want you to talk to me.”

Long, deft fingers on the laces of his breeches-

“I've been talking all afternoon.”

“I- well. Me too. But-”

“Come here.”

 _Shit._ He’s moving before he even realizes it, his traitor feet carrying him across the room like the pull of a strong current. When Cort reaches for him he’s easily caught, arms lifting of their own accord when Cort draws his shirt up over his head.

Cort leans in to brush his lips against the side of his throat and Taliesin swallows hard, tilting his body backward faintly, testing the resolve of the supporting hand at the small of his back.

“Cort.”

“Hmm?” A hum against the underside of his jaw as his head tilts back, bending when Cort’s hold predictably doesn’t waver.

This fucking... attractive... distracting… _Damn it._ “Cort!”

Cort sighs, dropping his head forward to rest lightly against Taliesin’s collarbone. “Yes, Taliesin?”

“As much as I would love for you to keep doing that for basically forever, I really do want to talk about this.”

Cort is quiet and still for a long moment, long enough that Taliesin wonders if he’s annoyed him, but when he finally pulls away his face is neutral and almost amused, as though something Taliesin is doing is hilarious and adorable. It’s not an entirely welcome sentiment, given that Taliesin is attempting to be as mature about this as possible for once in his idiotic life. Mature enough to meet in the middle, allowing himself to be pulled onto the bed when Cort sits down and lies back, straddled over his hips.

Cort sighs and pillows his head on one arm, reaching with the other to curl a hand softly around Taliesin’s side. His fingers stroke soothingly across his skin in a quiet, calming arc and it makes Taliesin feel- he isn't sure. He isn’t upset, doesn’t need to be comforted, but then again - isn’t that exactly what he’s asking for? Some explicit, verbal assurance that no mistakes have been made? No missteps he can’t walk back?

Sometimes dealing with himself is so fucking _infuriating._

“What’s that look?”

“Nothing,” he says immediately, ducking his head to avoid meeting Cort’s eyes. His hands find the broad plane of his chest, smooth warm skin under his palms, fingertips lightly pressing in like the first forays of seeds into the earth.

Cort is silent for a long moment, assessing, fingers going still on Taliesin’s side. Eventually he seems to make up his mind, sighing and resettling himself with both hands propped under his head, chest rising beneath Taliesin’s hands like a smooth ocean swell.

“I like her,” he says, with little enough preamble that Taliesin can’t help but cast him a wary glance. “She reminds me of you.”

“She- no she doesn’t.”

Cort’s lips bend up on one side, exaggerated by the tilt of his head. “Yes she does. And she has your look. A little younger and she could be your daughter.”

There’s a thought. “I didn’t get started _quite_ that early,” he says, and Cort smirks - after all, Cort was there.

“Still. No one who saw you side by side would mistake you for anything but family.”

The words in themselves are a kind of balm, soothing a ragged edge he hadn’t realized was there. It’s not just him that sees it, not just his mad, wishful thinking, though he would be lying to himself if he tried to pretend there wasn’t plenty of that in there anyway.

“It’s funny. She reminds me a bit of you as well.” Cort’s eyebrow lifts and he shrugs one shoulder in echo. “She’s so serious. And she isn’t afraid of shit.”

“She’s young,” Cort says, but the statement isn’t dismissive. Instead he fixes Taliesin with that quiet, knowing look again, reaching up to cup his cheek. “Is that what’s got you? That she reminds you of us?”

That is, he guesses, a very simple way to put it. He isn’t prepared to have his thoughts articulated so succinctly, and he can’t decide if it makes him sound naive or just foolish.

“It wouldn’t be the worst thing I guess. Us three, sailing the high seas. Having adventures. Parenting.” He means it as a joke but somehow it doesn’t quite come out that way, and when Cort doesn’t immediately smile he wishes he’d kept his big mouth shut. It’s terrible that he’s being taken seriously, his deflections ignored until all that’s left is an unrealized truth sitting there like a crab without its shell.

“She’d enjoy it.” Cort bends enough to give him that, hand sliding away again like it’s safer not to touch. Taliesin is... grateful. “I can’t say I want that life for her, though. She needs to be in lessons.”

“What?” Taliesin blinks, and Cort looks at him patiently like he’s being slow.

“In lessons, Taliesin. She’s too bright not to have a proper education.”

And it wouldn’t do her any favors in Arrabar either, if ever she found her way back there. To be the long lost daughter, one step above common-raised. Beautiful and ignorant, just another pawn on the chessboard of House Ferryman’s machinations.

“It couldn’t hurt anything, could it? No, of course not,” he quickly agrees when Cort looks at him like _he’s_ the one suffering ignorance. “You’re completely right. As usual.”

Cort just rolls his eyes, the shape of his mouth vaguely smug, though it fades quickly when Taliesin speaks again.

“And it’s not like I don’t have the money. It’s the best thing I can give her to protect herself. For when I’m- when we’re-” He can’t say it, can’t say the word.

“You knew this wouldn’t last forever.”

“I know. Less than a year and we’re back on the water. And I want that, I just-” He flounders in the words slipping from his mouth of their own accord, too fast for him to temper them into something less raw, less honest. “I could stay. We could. If we wanted. Maybe.”

He already knows that’s not a real possibility, even as the idea shakes free. What he’s suggesting feels almost treasonous, just speaking the words out loud crossing lines that can’t be uncrossed.

To stay would be to cut ties with his family, his house, his history, and defying his father so directly would do little more than paint an even bigger target on his back. He’d be nothing, no one, grinding for coin like the peasant he plays at being.

Not that he doesn’t think he could do well for himself; he’s smart, quick, nice to look at and clever enough to turn that to his advantage, but it would take time, energy, attention, effort he would spend making up lost ground. His usefulness would be limited, scarcely enough to counterbalance the danger he’d be inviting in, not bulwark enough to absorb the risk in exposing them all.

It’s a difficult thing to accept, to feel so free and still be so trapped. Cort thinks he doesn’t know just because he doesn’t want to look, but he recognizes that the shadows are always there whether he sees them or not.

And Cort-

“I can’t tell you what to do, Taliesin.”

Cort makes him no promises, just like he never has.

“No, you’re right,” he says again, leaning down to stretch himself over Cort’s body, head tucked beneath his chin. Cort’s arms come around him easily, if hesitantly, hands light where they rest against his back. “I just- What you said, before. That we never know what time we have left. I just don’t want to waste it.”

Cort kisses the crown of his head, sweet but cautious, so full of a hundred thousand tiny things left unsaid. “Then we won’t.”


	38. 26 (Part 1)

He’s having the nicest dream.

They’re on the beach a few miles from the city, far enough away that the water in the shallows is a cool, crisp blue, clear of the murky grays of refuse in the harbor. The air is balmy, warm with breeze enough to ruffle his hair, blunting the force of the sun on his bare chest and shoulders. The sea sparkles with light scattering like a fistful of gemstones strewn atop the gentle waves that lap in rhythm on the sandy shore.

It’s less a dream than a memory, he and Cort and Celeste passing an aimless afternoon amusing themselves at the seaside, nothing to do and nowhere to be but where they are. It’s a happy memory, full of his sister’s delighted laughter, her long hair tucked up under her hat as Cort teaches her how to fish.

Taliesin is awful at it, of course, too impatient to wait and always pulling his line in too soon. It makes Cort shake his head, eyes bright and amused, blue as the water on the horizon.

“Oh Taliesin,” Celeste says pityingly, because all he manages to reel in is an old boot with an angry crab living in the tattered toe. “Taliesin, Taliesin.”

“Taliesin? _Taliesin!”_

There’s a hand on his shoulder with fingers like ice, shaking him awake, and it jolts him out of the dream like he’s being dragged upward through water to the surface of the sea.

“Celie?” He blinks up at her in the darkness, turns over, his mind half a step behind the rest of him. “Your hands are freezing - did the fire go out?”

“There’s someone at the door.”

Someone at the door. Someone at the… what?

Awareness closes in around him with alarming speed, so fast it makes him lurch upright. There’s another insistant knocking, loud and urgent, and it immediately sends a thread of the old fear through his chest, speeding the thrum of his heart.

“Cort-”

He’s already getting up, more awake than Taliesin seems to be, reaching to pull on a shirt. “I hear it. Celeste, stay here. Keep the door shut.”

Celeste nods, gray eyes wide enough that Taliesin has to kiss her face, rubbing a soothing hand over her hair. “It’s fine, it’s probably just Marv drunk.”

It better be just Marv drunk. Their neighborhood isn’t particularly dangerous, but they aren’t in the habit of receiving visitors in the middle of the night. Both he and Cort have weapons in hand when Cort flings open the door.

It’s- Well, it’s not Marv, but a graying older man, harried-looking and in robes that would look more official if they weren’t rumpled and covered over with a cloak on inside out. His mouth drops open in obvious alarm, clearly not expecting the door to be answered with the point of a sword, but before he can speak a hand appears on the stranger’s shoulder and politely guides him out of the way, the captain’s grizzled visage appearing, shadowy in the lamplight off the street.

Taliesin relaxes instinctively, sheathing his weapon, but Veda looks somber and grim and his relief is short lived. There’s movement on the periphery of his vision; Celeste is in the doorway of their bedroom, hugging her dressing gown around her. Her eyes flick back and forth between them, and by the time he looks back, Cort is in a hushed exchange with the robed stranger, his back to the room. He steps closer and Veda intercepts him, resting a hand on his shoulder.

Immediately he knows something is wrong.

“What’s happened.”

Veda shifts uneasily and frowns, his mouth strangely expressive in the absence of his omnipresent pipe.

“You’d better put some clothes on, son. I'll explain on the way.”

*

It comes together almost too easily for something so momentous, so simple that it seems unfair. Nial Raghnall is dying in distant Arrabar and has asked to see his son, the request delivered in an instant through magical means Taliesin barely has the wherewithal to understand on the best of his days.

There isn’t time to spare and money has never been an obstacle, but the ease of it is shocking. It feels like a violation, the abrupt breach of distance ripping away the tentative sense of safety that has grown up like a stubborn weed through salted earth. He has never felt more strongly the invisible leash around his throat, tight with the knowledge that nowhere is safe, no matter how far removed.

It makes him want to rail against the injustice, give vent to the maelstrom gathering in his chest that threatens to escape with every breath like steam clattering under the lid of a pot as water starts to boil over. But he can’t. He holds it in, pushes it under, trying desperately to get beyond it before it lures him into doing something so stupid and selfish he’ll never be able to take it back.

He needs to deal with his immediate reality, with the here and now. There will be plenty of time to pick over the broken stones of his emotions later. After-

Just after. Because Cort will go. Should go. Has to go. And Taliesin will close his teeth on the shrill wailing in the back of his mind as it rises to a crescendo, and let it happen.

He almost wishes that he’d stayed at the cottage, feeling useless and underfoot. Having him here surely will not make anything easier, and yet here he is, carried along like he’s caught in a current. Taliesin shivers in the wide emptiness of the room, the airy space of a well-appointed foyer, and wraps both arms around himself against a penetrating numbness that has nothing to do with the cold. That seems wrong too, the mundanity of their surroundings, just the front hall of some elderly mage’s three story brick townhome. There is a potted plant that stands primly next to an uncomfortable looking chair with very thin legs and he stares uncomprehendingly at the shadows they cast across the floor.

There are preparations going on behind him that he’s too nauseous to watch. In any other situation he would be fascinated and curious, unsure what to make of the bearded, bespectacled old man in a thick red velvet dressing gown that seems made for a person twice his size who rummages rough-handed through a thick leather bound grimoire like he’s lost his page in a novel. Now, though, it just makes him sick to his stomach, all the colors blending together muddily until the details are lost to him, gripping at shadows that turn to mist in his fingers. He can’t look at them.

Celeste is bundled up in his cloak, huddling tiredly out of the way, having refused to be left at home though there’s nothing for her to do. He can’t look at her either, afraid that- just afraid.

He’s holding together with spit and string and one gentle tug will make him unravel. He can’t allow it. It wouldn’t be fair.

Not that it’s easy. Strong hands close unconscionably warm on his shoulders and it almost snaps him in half like a mast in a sudden squall. It feels like ages before he trusts himself to turn around, feeling in grave detail the hot, dry feeling beneath his eyelids that heralds a sudden rush of tears. He buries the temptation to give into it, shoves it ruthlessly under.

“Are you alright?” Cort asks softly, and stiffly he nods. He is, because the Taliesin he’ll pretend to be for the next twenty minutes is mature and reasonable and knows better than to create an inappropriate fuss during moments already so sensitive.

“Are they almost ready?”

“Just about.” Cort drops his hands but they’re standing so close that Taliesin can still feel the warmth of his body, enveloped in his presence. He wants to drown himself in it, wants to wrap himself in it like a blanket until he smothers.

Neither of them know what to say, his eyes on Cort’s face and Cort’s on him, so still he can count the beats of his own racing heart until Cort shifts his weight, shattering the silence.

“I’m- sorry.”

Sorrow crawls on frigid knees and elbows up his spine, crackling over his skin like thin ice floating on the surface of a deep, dark pool. “Don’t be. You don’t have to be. We always knew something like this could happen.”

Cort nods, because what else is he supposed to do. It isn’t like it isn’t true. There are just also about a million other things that they could say instead and they aren’t giving voice to a single one, and it makes him want to walk into a fire and burn himself to death.

He should have known he’d never be able to contain it all, this frantic energy slipping through the wells and ravines in his skin like light shining through tattered cloth across a window. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

“I think it’s for the best,” Cort answers, gentle and quiet like he can see the ice under Taliesin’s feet breaking.

“I understand.” And he does, but he doesn’t. The message was for Cort and Cort alone. Taliesin’s sudden manifestation would cause problems. Cort’s father is _dying_ , it’s not supposed to be about _him._

And it would be. Somehow, some way, it would be. They could never trust Taliesin’s father to leave well enough alone. He knows that, they both do, and only the glacier forming in his chest keeps him from crawling on his knees, prostrate on the floor, begging not to be left behind.

Cort deserves better. Taliesin can be better, and at least pretend that he doesn’t see the regret clouding those clear blue eyes.

The lines in Cort’s brow are deep, mouth set in uncertain, unhappy lines. “I don’t know how long I’ll be-” he starts, tapering off like he doesn’t know where that sentence was meant to end.

“But you’ll come back if you can. Won’t you?”

Cort doesn’t respond, looking sharply away when Veda says his name.

“They’re ready for you, son.”

They’re out of time, and when Cort turns around and kisses him hard, gathering Taliesin into an embrace that threatens to snap all his ribs like kindling, he can taste every word left unsaid.

It doesn’t feel like anything, not yet, just the sudden flaring heat of Cort’s body and Taliesin’s mouth slanted under his, heedless and uncaring beneath the discomfort of every eye in the room on them.

They pull back but not away, foreheads pressed together, and _now_ his heart starts to ache, a tremor in the earth beneath his feet.

And just like that, it’s over.

Cort moves to stand within a circle traced out hastily on the bare stone floor, and the emptiness at Taliesin’s side is a sucking void of emotion that pours in to curl tight hands around his throat. Celeste slips like a shadow to slide into its place and even that can't hold back the rushing tide, though he clutches her cold little hand in his like he'll keep them both from being pulled under. He has to; he's out of maneuvers, out of options, he _has to._

Cort looks at him across the lines they dare not cross, gaze heavy with regret, and Taliesin forces a smile to the surface, bubbling up like the last breath of a drowning man.

“I love you.”

“Be careful.”

And then he's gone.

*

The cottage is frigid, frost coating the window panes. His breath hangs in the air as he automatically stoops in front of the fireplace, numb fingers of gloveless hands fumbling more wood into the hearth, stirring up cold ash in search of an ember.

He isn’t sure how he gets the fire lit, isn’t sure how they’ve found their way back home at all, but here they are and everything just feels wrong. Celeste hovers in the background, quietly putting things away where he’s discarded them without thought, but even then the room feels too big, too empty.

Cort is gone and he can feel it in his soul, a hollow churning in his stomach, a pain in his chest like a nail driven through his heart. It beats sluggishly around it, and if he could bleed he would pour himself out onto the floor until there was nothing left.

The next thing he knows he’s in bed. The sheets curl around his bloodless form like ice water, offering nothing of the warmth they once held. He doesn’t even have the wherewithal to get up and get a blanket. He’ll need one, without Cort’s furnace of a body to make him sweat in the middle of the night. Instead he just lies there and lets himself be cold, covers pulled up to his chin like he can shut it all out, make everything go away.

It’s late. He’s tired. He just wants to sleep. Soon the sky will start to lighten; the sun will creep up over the horizon and he’ll have to get up, get dressed, face it all. Figure out what he’s going to do. Keep living. Not that the world is ending, not after one single night apart, but the things he fears, the pernicious, insidious thoughts that cloud his mind, let him focus no further than the empty pillow on the other side of the bed.

He’s still lying there when Celeste eventually lets herself in, the whisper of her stocking feet and her nightgown almost too loud in the silence.

“Can I sleep in here? It’s too cold in the other room.”

It’s colder in the bedroom even with the door standing open, but she’s already sliding in next to him, the mattress dipping behind him beneath her slight weight, and he doesn’t have the energy to tell her to go away. He isn’t sure he wants that anyway. He doesn’t do well with loss, he knows that about himself, but he’s vain enough to want to hide that from her, to cling to the heroic mantle she lets him wear. 

Even if it’s only out of kindness. Out of pity. He  _ is  _ pitiful, small and lonely like a child in the dark.

She curls her body against his back and he almost weeps, his eyes swimming with tears that burn against his eyelids as her bony knees jut against the backs of his thighs and one skinny arm pulls across his waist. Celeste presses her cold nose to the back of his shoulder, the heat of her breath faintly damp through his shirt, and he forces himself to breathe slow and deep, calm against the way it feels like he’s being torn apart.

“Are you okay?” she asks, and on instinct he lies, falsehoods falling automatically from his mouth.

“Of course, darling. Just tired. It’s late.”

Celeste doesn’t say anything to that for a long moment, as though she sees right through it. She probably does; he’s not giving it his best effort and there has always been little he could do against the steady methodical thoughtfulness that she and Cort share. It swallows him up like a net, catches him every time.

“It’s okay to be sad.”

All the lump in his throat wants to do is choke him.

“I’m not sad… not exactly. I’m sad for him. Sad his father isn’t doing well.”

“Sad he had to go.”

It’s said so gently that it sounds like condemnation. “No.”

The lie sits sullenly between them and makes her quiet again, overly careful as she turns her head to lay her cheek against his back. “It’s not selfish. It wouldn’t be, if you did feel that way.”

“I don’t.”

“You love each other. It’s hard to be apart from what you love.”

He’s never been all that good at being comforted in the moment, trying to bail water from the boat with the sea still crashing over the rails. It shines too bright a light on the hurt, sears the aching spots that ooze like skin peeled back to expose the pulse of raw muscle beneath; makes him want to lash out, to coil up inside his pain like a razor sharp shell that will cut fingers that only seek to soothe.

“You’re fourteen, Celeste. What do you know about love.”

“I know that I’ll miss you, when it’s your turn to go,” she whispers, her mouth barely moving against his shoulder like she’s burying the words along with the truth in them, and that is all it takes to instantly suffuse him with guilt.

“Celie, I-”

“You don’t have to lie to me, Taliesin. I’m not a child.”

“But you  _ are _ . You are, and I want you to stay that way for as long as you can. Maybe I shouldn’t have- maybe I should have never-”

“Shut up.” Her pointed little chin digs in hard when she sets it over his shoulder, squeezing him more tightly than he thought her thin arms could manage. 

“Don’t ruin it. I love you and I’m not sorry,” she says, and he hears so much of Cort in her voice in that moment, shaped in words he’s never said, that it sets the dam to breaking. Hot tears slip free, pooling at the corners of his eyes, slipping across the bridge of his nose and down his cheek to seep into the still-cold fabric of his pillow like blood into the dirt. It makes his whole body want to seize, to curl in on itself as all the things he doesn’t want to say threaten to burst free of his body like jagged bones through skin. It’s a long time before he can trust himself to speak.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m tired and I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“It’s okay,” she says, and kisses his cheek without looking into his face. “Just go to sleep. It will be better in the morning.”


	39. 26 (Part 2)

The winter is endless. Gray day stretches on after gray day, icy and windy and bleak until they all blur together like streaks of condensation pulling twenty years of dust down a dirty windowpane. There's never any news, just a cold, empty silence that echoes through the room.

“Taliesin- Taliesin? Are you alright?”

No. Never. He doesn't say that though, coming back into his body in a disjointed rush like scraps slopped into a pail, the half frozen ground under his folded legs rising up to meet him with a joint-jarring crunch.

“Sorry Celie, I was... thinking. About something else.”

The look Celeste gives him is wounding in its gentleness, both knowing and pitying in the softest way. He can't hold her gaze for very long, shaking himself free with a deep breath of cold air that shivers into him like the reversal of a sigh and meets the quiet chill that already makes its home inside his chest.

It doesn't allow for words and so he doesn't explain, knees creaking when he shifts his weight, leaning forward to dig his ungloved fingers into the trowel-loosened ground, excavating a small round hole in the dirt. Celeste drops the unsprouted bulb of a _blooms in darkness_ into it and covers it up with earth, a small raised mound in the empty flower bed marking its spot.

She's trying to tell him something he thinks, pulling him away from her lessons and outside under the heatless sun to plant flowers. They only take root in the cold she claims, and for all he knows she has him out here planting onions in the guise of a metaphor, but the thought is kind and he doesn't know or care enough about plants to do anything but go with the aphorism.

And it's not as if he doesn't appreciate it. He's been terribly needy, unmoored by Cort's absence and adrift in the emptiness inside their house. It was always meant to be temporary, has never truly felt like a home, but it's as if a stranger lives there now, among the empty shelves and barren cupboards. He doesn't even recognize his own things, an interloper in his own space, and he can scarcely stand to be there alone, rattling around like loose change in a pocket.

Celeste is still looking at him with those deep gray eyes, and he smiles, knowing his silence does nothing to allay her undeserved concern. “I'm fine, Celie,” he says for what must be the seven hundredth time. “Don't worry about me.”

Predictably, she doesn't believe him. Nobody does it seems, though he tries out the same line on everyone, laughing Rix and Marv away like it's nothing. No one is buying what he's selling but he continues to peddle it anyway, a smile firmly on his mouth when later he reports to the naval offices as he does most days.

The smell of paper is cloying, mixing with woodsmoke from a dozen small and poorly ventilated furnaces that keep the building too hot in some rooms and frigid in others. The hallways are small and cramped by an endless stream of people and goods moving through, salt-shiny boxes of supplies standing in corridors mid-transit. Someone is always yelling and no one ever knows why, but he follows a winding path to the small quarter chamber the officers of the _Star Shark_ share to check in with the captain.

It’s late enough in the day that the room is mostly clear, save for one elderly looking gentleman snoozing in a corner with a captain’s coat draped flagging over the back of his chair and Veda himself, puffing ponderously on his pipe, sweet tobacco smoke briefly frothing the air before it’s swept out a window left slightly ajar. He nods at Taliesin when he steps in, the lines around his eyes deepening.

“Jeffers said you wanted to see me, sir?”

“So I did.”

The captain is silent as Taliesin makes himself as comfortable as he can on an intentionally uncomfortable chair. Veda is not much of one for landlocked desk work though it only shows because Taliesin knows him well. He continues to peruse the sheaf of paper in his hand at his leisure, never one to be rushed, and Taliesin waits and tries not to fidget until he finally sighs and puts it aside, fixing his young protege with a thoughtful stare.

“You have a letter,” he says finally, never one to mince words either, though he offers no reaction when the statement makes Taliesin straighten and then shrink back, instantly caught between a blistering hope that he knows is irrational, and the cold dread in the pit of his stomach that pulls him toward the floor like silt churned by rough current finally settling.

“A letter, sir?” He’s afraid to ask from where, from who, the words caught in his mouth like fish in a net because he already suspects and he’s unclear enough in his own feelings to know if he truly wants to be proven right.

Veda doesn’t answer him, just slides a square of parchment across the desk, its edges crisp and formal. It’s unsealed, without an envelope, and he picks it up with an uncertain hand as if the touch of the thing alone will incinerate him.

“You’ll have to forgive the intrusion upon your privacy. It was included in one addressed to me.” The captain pauses, a slow exhalation of smoke swirling in the air between them before it clears. “You’ll want to read that when you’re alone.”

The words make sense and don’t, and Taliesin just nods, the gesture automatic and all he can manage with the sudden ringing in his ears and the way the room begins to slowly spin, untethering itself from the rest of the building as if it too will sweep itself out the window and into the coming darkness.

“...of course, sir.”

“Taliesin,” Veda stops him as he makes to stand, crisp lines of parchment already crumpling in his hand. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

*

The walk back to the house seems to take forever, the distance beneath his feet doubling until it feels like he’s walking through water, struggling to hold his footing with every step. He nearly stops to tear the thing apart in an alley half a dozen times, but the captain would not have warned him as he had unless there was a reason to do so. Something is coming, some storm on the horizon, and he isn’t so delusional as to think he’ll manage to avoid the flood.

He finally sits down with it, pulling out a seat at the table in the kitchen. It’s been weeks since he’s taken a meal here, avoiding being alone even if it means walking all over town in the wind and cold, and its surface is still scrubbed as spotless as the last time Olivia came to clean. It seems a waste, to pay a woman from the neighborhood to pop in and tidy the way they had when it was the two of them, but she can use the coin and it isn’t as though he’s magically become better at cleaning in Cort’s absence. If anything, the cottage is groaning and pitiful in disuse, and the last time Olivia dropped by all they’d done is have a cup of tea and talk about her little ones.

There are three of them, they are all adorable, and now he’s just stalling. After all of that, he can scarcely bear to touch the thing, left neglected in front of him like a meal he isn’t hungry for.

He makes himself do it, eventually. Makes himself thumb at the perfectly aligned edges of the paper until it comes unfolded in his hand, and smooths it out in front of him before ever allowing himself to read a word.

 

Taliesin,

I'm sorry that it's taken so long for me to write you. Things have been moving quickly since my return and I've never liked to be the bearer of bad news.

I regret to inform you of my father's passing. He left us not two days after my arrival in Arrabar. The healers say it was some weakness in his heart. It wasn't surprising, he was not a young man, but his death has changed things.

By the time you receive this message, I will have formally accepted my father's role as House Ferryman's swordmaster, and with it all of the responsibilities it entails.

It falls to me as my father's sole heir to protect the Raghnall legacy. That is a duty I know you understand. As such, I will not be in a position to return to the Star Shark , though I hope what teachings I've been able to pass along to the men will serve them well in battles to come.

I will never forget my time at sea. It was valuable and instructive and has provided confirmation of my rightful place - and of yours. You are unlikely to find in Arrabar anything more suited to your personal talents than what you have where you are. I pray your career enjoys many more fruitful years, uninterrupted by unfortunate circumstance.

Please give my regards to captain and crew.

Your friend always,  
C.R.

 

He has no idea how long he spends just sitting there, staring at the black ink on the off-white parchment, Cort’s precise script in its succinct scrawl across the page. There isn’t much to read, perhaps because there was never much to say, and still he finds himself searching for some hidden meaning between the perfectly parallel lines, trying to navigate to some alternate message like buried treasure, there if he just digs deep enough.

There’s nothing. He knows there’s nothing. Has known it all along.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. It isn’t, not exactly. If Cort felt he could come back he would have, and there would be no need for this - _farce,_ this fucking _bullshit_ \- formality, as though their time together had been little more than what this letter made it sound. Just business and pleasantries and _friendship_ like he hadn’t all but cut his heart out when Cort left and sent it with him.

_...has provided confirmation of my rightful place - and of yours._

_And of yours._

So that was that, then. Cort would take up the _burden_ of their kind, would do his _duty_ , and Taliesin would- what.

Do fucking _nothing_ . Because he’d known that this would happen. He’d expected this. He’d seen this wave coming miles in the distance, growing nearer and _ignored_ in every tender moment, in every embrace and passionate touch, because he’d always been too much of a coward to admit that Cort would never change his mind. That he had always been this way; the perfect son, the perfect little soldier, never a step out of place or pace in his march down the path laid before him, whether that led to the right hand of a man he couldn’t stand or the bed of a wife he didn’t want, in a place that had never brought anyone much happiness.

And why not. It was what he was born for, trained for, what he had worked for while Taliesin floundered like a leaf in the rapids, always fighting against the current. It’s what Cort is _good_ at, and regardless of what Taliesin thinks he deserves, it’s something he can have. Something his own.

And he’s never made Taliesin any promises.

The thought is cold comfort, settling like a mantle heavy and gray over his bare shoulders as he strips off his shirt and flings it on the floor, splashing his face with frigidly cold water from the basin. It soaks his hair, drags icy fingers down his chest and back like nails lancing through his skin, but he hardly feels it, standing dripping and miserable before the large mirror that they only ever kept for Cort to shave in. He hates it, hates the brightness of the reflection it casts, the sparkle of waning light off the tumbler in his hand as he pours himself too much to drink, the way the skin of his throat looks pale and fragile as he swallows it down.

He doesn’t even realize that he’s thrown his glass at it until his reflection multiplies, refracting into a thousand distorted shapes. Somehow that’s worse, a mosaic of himself breaking in desolate synchronicity, and he slams his fist into it until he can’t see anything behind a blur of blood and tears, yanking the thing off the wall to throw it into one corner with an ungainly clatter.

His fingertips are dripping, rum, water and blood mixing with shattered glass on the floor, and he just _doesn’t care_ , doesn’t have it in him, can’t bring himself to do more than curl onto his side in the mess he created and dissolve.

*

When he blows back into the barracks, hours later, it’s with steps that sway like sealegs lost, and bandaged hands hidden up the sleeves of his shirt. He throws his things into the bunk next to Marv’s and turns to face his skeptical friends, plastering on the widest, most careless smile he can muster.

“I'm in need of a drink or twelve. Somebody take me out.”


	40. 26 (Part 3)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for self-destructive behavior and suicidal thoughts.

He doesn’t know where he is.

It’s dark and he’s on the floor, laid out awkwardly on his side to where one of his arms has gone numb, as dead and useless as his tongue in his mouth when he coughs, barely a sound squeezing through the parched cracking in his throat that makes each breath sound like a wheeze.

Everything hurts, every inch of his body from the unpleasant tightness in his ribs to the sandpapery dryness of his eyelids, and when he tries to sit up, hauling himself awkwardly on the arm he can still mostly feel, he’s immediately sick, a churning roil in his stomach forcing its way upward through the razors in his mouth. All thoughts other than making it to the bucket in the corner immediately vanish and he still doesn’t entirely succeed, thin watery bile down the front of his shirt to join other unidentified stains he can see but not register in the half-light, vomiting until it feels like there’s nothing left in him but bones.

It leaves him weak and shaking, falling back against the wall with the bucket in his lap as the room slowly settles from its constant spin. His eyes blearily focus in on the opposite wall, the empty room, the closed door, and then finally the bars that interpose themselves between himself and everything else.

Shit. He’s in the brig. _Shit._

He throws up again on principle, and again when he weakly calls for help, shaking and defenseless as the blood rushes back into his deadened arm and cascades a ruthless prickling of pins and needles all through his flesh. It makes his hands throb, still wrapped in the ruins of now-filthy bandages. They’re stiff, caked with more blood than he thinks there should be, but he can hardly remember. He flexes his fingers beneath them, slowly turns his wrists; his hands quiver, ache, but he still has the use of them.

Fat lot of good that will do him. He can’t even stand up.

He’s disgusting, fetid, and he can’t tell what time of day it is with the wan light coming through the slit windows near the ceiling. Someone has thrown them all open and a lucky thing too, else he might have suffocated in his own filth. That might have been kinder, if whoever has locked him in here meant at all to be kind. He thinks not. He thinks he probably doesn’t deserve kindness, at this point.

They’ve left him something to drink on the other side of the bars where there’s no risk of him kicking it over, within grasp but well enough away that he has to reach for it, wincing as he drags himself along the floor to lean heavily against the metal bars. The door doesn’t budge with the faint rattling he can muster and he doesn’t really even make himself try, too consumed with gulping down water that immediately makes him sick again, back up out of him as soon as he manages to swallow it down. His throat burns, his eyes burn, his hands burn, and it feels as though he’s been punched in the jaw and thrown down a flight of stairs, which are both reasonable guesses given that he can’t remember a fucking thing.

Just flashes. A glass lifted to his lips. A tavern. The letter.

The letter.

Fuck.

He doesn’t know how he has anything in him left for tears, but they come uncalled and the heaving in his chest makes him sick again until everything stops and he’s dragged blissfully, helplessly, back under.

*

When he wakes up again there’s more water for him to drink, and some merciful soul has emptied the bucket of his sick. Something still reeks though and he can only imagine it’s him, covered in filth and sweating alcohol and gods know what else out of his body. It’s claustrophobically warm in here despite the way the wind howls at the edges of the windows, enough that he can painfully strip off his shirt and throw it to one side. Not that it helps much, but he doesn’t care. All he wants to do is sleep.

*

He’s been awake for some time when the door opens, hours later. Maybe days. It was fully dark and then light again, but he can’t be sure how conscious he was for most of it. The floor is unpleasantly hard under his body and he’s long ago given up on finding a comfortable way to lie, merely sprawled on one side again facing outward through his cage. It’s just him and his bucket of regret; they’ve taken his shoes and his belt and everything out of his pockets, which would hardly stop him if he really wanted to find a way out of here, but he can’t see the point.

Maybe they’ll leave him down here forever. Maybe he’ll rot into the floorboards and eventually be washed into the bilge where the rats will feast on his remains. He doesn’t care.

But they won’t, of course. The door opens and Jeffers steps in, sloshing a bucket of water in each hand with something slung over one shoulder. He has a face made for whistling, the kind that makes you think he should, but he never does, as lost in thought now as he seems to be all the time despite the unpleasantness of the cramped space and the spectacle Taliesin has chosen to make of himself, limp and hopeless on the floor.

Jeffers hardly seems to pay him any mind, puttering in the space outside the bars as Taliesin watches, scarcely bothering to lift his head off the floor. Eventually he crosses over to the door of the cell, turning key in lock and letting it creak open. He tuts quietly at the mess Taliesin has made - of his body, of his life, of everything - but doesn’t bother with admonitions, taking a knee next to Taliesin’s prone form and resting the back of a weathered hand against his sticky forehead.

“Can you sit up, lad?”

“No,” Taliesin mutters sourly, his voice rusty and grating with disuse, but he sits up anyway. It makes his ribs hurt and his back aches like all of his bones are resettling wrong inside his sad sack of skin, but he doesn’t do anything to help himself, slouching there like a sullen child trying to prove some doomed point to the universe. The door is standing wide open, but where would he go? What’s the point? The only thing he can think to do is to throw himself into the sea, and for what. The water in the harbor is cold, and he’s too good a swimmer to just drown. Someone would fish him out again.

Jeffers lights a candle and passes it back and forth in front of his half-lidded eyes, leaving spots of brightness in Taliesin’s vision when he finally snuffs it out. Whatever he sees there seems to satisfy him, nodding to himself as he gets up and sweeps the nonexistent dust from his knees.

“Brought some water if you wanna wash up. ‘S cold, but better than sitting in your sick.”

“Thanks.”

Modesty is just a pretense at this point, and he strips off gingerly, gasping and cringing when Jeffers empties the first bucket over his head. It’s cold as fuck and salty to boot, and half his back goes up in flames, ragged tears in his flesh that he hadn’t noticed beyond the persistent ache in the rest of him singing with a fresh, new kind of pain. Numbly he scrubs off with a bar of harsh soap and braces himself for the second bucket, blood and sweat and everything else sluiced away as Jeffers methodically and whistlelessly sweeps it down the drain with a broom.

Still, he does feel better, if better is something that even has any meaning at this point, bracing himself against the corner to put on a clean shirt and pair of breeches. Everything hurts in a brand new way and he’s tired, too tired to put up a fuss when Jeffers ushers him into another cell while the floor in this one dries, slumping into the corner with knees drawn to his chest as the medic looks at the mangled mess he’s made of his hands.

“Gonna have scars,” is the only thing Jeffers says, his tone neutral and apprising as if he’s just letting Taliesin know, with no judgement attached though he certainly deserves it.

“I don’t care.”

“Didn’t think you would,” Jeffers agrees, amicable to an actual fault, but still gentle and thorough as he dabs salve over the wounds and rewraps Taliesin’s hands in gauze. “I’d give you something for the pain, but…”

“That’s okay. It’s not that bad.”

He’s lying and they both know it, and Jeffers only lifts one half of his mouth into a smile that is all the acknowledgement that farce really deserves.

“Sorry you’re stuck taking care of me.”

“Ain’t the first time. ‘S my job.”

“Still. What… happened?”

Jeffers bushy brows go up at the question, and it’s a long moment before he answers, sucking the inside of his cheek. “Took something you shouldn’t’ve, far as I can tell. Maybe several somethings. Marv said they found you behind in an alley with your pockets turned out, bloodied up like you’d given somebody what for. Don’t suppose _you_ remember?”

“No.”

Jeffers shrugs. “Just as well. Don’t think you killed nobody.”

That thought hadn’t even occurred to him and he frowns, wracking his mind again for memories that just won’t come. He hadn’t meant for anyone else to get hurt, theif or no. He never means for anyone else to get hurt.

“Sorry,” he says again, and it sounds more like he means it this time. He’s cold, he feels small, and he pulls his legs to his chest, arms tight about his shins as Jeffers finishes up. “How long do you think I have to stay in here?”

“Hard to say. Captain’ll want to talk to you, ‘ventually.”

That’s all that needs to be said about that. Taliesin nods wearily, accepting, too tired to question or even to worry, ready to just let this be as it may. He has shown an stunning inability to control his own life thus far, so it’s little wonder that this is where he’s found himself. There’s no reason to fight it, not when his eyelids feel so heavy.

“Hang in there boy,” he thinks he hears Jeffers say as the cell door pulls shut and the key turns over in the lock above his head. And then back to welcome nothingness.

*

He’s not alone, not the whole time. He wakes up now and again with the sense of another body beyond the bars. Not always, the feeling comes and goes, but he thinks that his dazed recollection of Marv sitting on the floor across from him lecturing about the enormous magnitude of his stupidity is too like reality to be just a dream.

He sees Jeffers several times, and wakes up once with a warm, solid weight against his back that makes him cry, first at the unasked for balm of an affectionate touch and again in earnest when he realises that it’s Rix, and not- just not. He sobs for an hour like a child with his head in the lap of a man he still thinks of as a boy, and wonders to what further depths he can sink. If this, in the dark at the bottom of the ship, is really as low as he can go.

If he really wants to test that theory. What would be left of him if he did.

*

He spends three days in the dark, sleeping when he can and lying on the floor staring at the ceiling when he can’t, wearing himself out with thoughts when restless pacing fails him, back and forth across the short length of his tiny cell. The hours are endless, interspersed with Jeffers and his methodical cleaning, bowls of gruel and soggy bread and finally potatoes boiled nearly to mush with an accompaniment of all the water he can drink when he can finally keep solid food in him without his stomach rebelling.

It’s all tasteless but he doesn’t care, more concerned with the fact that they won’t even give him a spoon to eat with. What the fuck do they think he’s going to do with a _spoon._ It would be much more effective to bash his head in against the bulkhead, or-

Right. The lack of cutlery makes sense.

He knows what he must seem like; he’s crazy, not stupid. But it’s not their fault. He doesn’t trust himself either.

He’s half-dreaming when Veda finally makes his appearance, fitfully dozing in the corner furthest from the door, curled up small like his body will make itself invisible if he pulls it in tight enough. It takes him a moment to realize that the figure in the chair on the other side of the bars is real and not some feverish hallucination, though the hawkish gaze is just as incisive as the fangs of any cursed creature of his nightmares, cool and assessing and unreadable.

He sits up, rubs away the drool at the corner of his mouth. Self-consciously straightens his rumpled shirt. Veda doesn’t move, and Taliesin doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know which is worse, the weighty yoke of regrets around his neck or the dry, prickling feeling in his eyes that heralds a flood.

After all of this, he doesn’t deserve to weep.

“Taliesin.”

“I’m sorry.”

It isn’t what he means to say but his mouth offers it up of its own accord, quick tongue taking over where his brain stutters and stalls. He can’t quite manage anything else beyond ‘sir’, a bizarre afterthought. It makes Veda shake his head, disappointed and- something else. Pitying, maybe. Sorry for him.

“I’m glad to see you managed not to end yourself completely. Made a good fucking run of it, though.”

“I didn’t mean to make trouble.”

“Didn’t you?”

He doesn’t have an answer to that. Not one that either of them will believe.

“I imagine I’m owed a flogging.” His voice comes out wry and stupid and with a shovel, clearly not content to make due with the apology he’s given so much as inclined to dig him a grave.

“Is that what you deserve?”

“Isn’t it?”

“And this isn’t enough for you?” Veda gestures needlessly to the dim room, the claustrophobically low ceiling, the dingy walls and dirty floor that still smells faintly of vomit and blood, a lazy circle drawn with his unlit pipe. “You need more? Want me to clap you in irons? Keelhaul you? Flay the skin off you and feed you to the sharks?”

The threat isn’t exactly idle, spoken in a way that makes him think that maybe the captain has given consideration to at least one of those solutions, but he’s stupid enough to shrug like he doesn’t care. Maybe he doesn’t care. Maybe he should. Either way, it makes the captain sigh, visibly annoyed.

"You think you're the only person to ever be _sad?_ Grow up, Taliesin. You can't just replace one pain with another."

"I- That isn't-" But it is, it is, that's exactly what he's doing, immersing himself in the way his limbs shake, in how his body aches, trying to douse coals in a bucket and ignoring how the water has started to boil.

It takes so little for him to come undone, the uneven stitches in his soul fraying like ragged sails in the breeze, unable to catch enough wind to propel him forward. He doesn't want to cry but he does it anyway, grinding the heels of his palms into his eyes, his face hot against his healing hands as it burns in shame.

Veda doesn't say anything for the stretch of an endless moment; silence suffuses the room, tight like the noose he draws around his own throat, choking out the way he wants to give into selfishness and pity and sob. Eventually the captain sighs, gusty and tired, the rickety chair creaking under him as he shifts his weight to lean forward and rest bony elbows on his knees.

"Better to feel it. Feel it, and let it go."

"What if I can't?" What if he doesn't want to?

Again the captain says nothing, chewing absently on the stem of his pipe. Taliesin can hear it clicking against his teeth, a muted, familiar sound.

"You should probably know that I knew. He told me. That his father wasn't doing well," Veda finishes, when Taliesin finally drops his hands.

"He did?"

"Months ago."

That is- He doesn't know, but his silence must say it all.

"He never told you."

"I... no. No, he didn't."

"I'm to blame for some of this, I suppose."

"Captain-"

"I have a son, you know. Well, you probably don't, not many people do." Veda leans forward in his chair and rubs his forehead, long, wizened fingers rubbing at the deep furrows in his brow. He looks- something. Old. Old in a way he never has before. "He'd be about your age now, I reckon. Haven't seen him in years."

There's a story here, he can feel it like the deck beneath him. Something ancient and sad and none of his business, but he doesn't dare interrupt. Veda is quiet for a time, lighting his pipe with the deft surety of a well-practiced habit.

"I thought it was a bad idea, at first. Having him on the ship. You young men, you're not as subtle as you think you are. I knew that first night in Arrabar what was happening between you. But you were young - younger - and he was so gods damn persistent, and I thought- well. I thought, ‘Why not, old man. What could it hurt.’ I thought maybe you could be happy. I could have protected you."

"You're not my father."

"And you're not my son, but that doesn't change the fact that I have a responsibility to you. As your captain. And your friend."

That makes him want to cry all over again in another hundred ways, but he doesn't. Instead he hangs his head, picks at the dirt beneath his nails, stares at the knotted wood in the floor. "I wish you were my father."

"I know."

It's not what he could have said, but it scarcely matters. The smoke in the air curls around him like arms, a strange, ephemeral comfort.  

"So what happens now?"

"I hope you understand that I'm not going to keelhaul you. I should leave you here, with your sister, but I'm not going to do that either. As much as I'm loathe to sit by and watch you destroy yourself. Unless you think you can manage not to."

"I don't want to let you down."

Veda snorts, the sound phlegmatic like he's allergic to the submissive way the words are spoken, like they're something stuck in his craw that he can't quite swallow down. "Worry about letting yourself down. I won't stop you from throwing yourself into the sea, stupid boy, but I hope you'll do otherwise. There's not a man on this ship who hasn't lost something. You're not the first person to have to learn how to hurt and still keep living."

"Does it ever stop?"

"No. But it won't always take up so much space."

They're both silent for a long time, Taliesin lost in thought and Veda- who can say. Eventually the captain clears his throat, stands and leans in, long fingers wrapping one of the bars like he'll bend it in his hand. "Repairs are almost done. Two weeks and we're back on the water. Say your goodbyes, wrap up your family business, and if you're still alive by then you'll have other things to worry about. You don't owe it to anybody but yourself."

Smoke hangs in the air long after he leaves, lingering like his presence, words replaying in Taliesin's mind, moving end over end like stones washed across the shoreline. When he finally looks up its to find a single iron key, resting lightly atop the lock like a feather on a scale.


End file.
